In the beginning ...

I accidentally touched on this subject in the last blog.  But, I figure that I can still go in deeper on the subject for this one.

The subject is addressing the question: "Where did all life come from?"  It's clear that the majority of the scientific community does not agree with the Bible on answering this question.  
How do you answer this question?  Do you side with "science"?  Do you side with the Bible?  Do you try and marry the two so that you agree with everyone?

Let's look at it.  There's no denying that life itself is unfathomably complex and pretty mind-blowing when you actually begin to think about it.  The human body is a walking, talking, thinking, problem-solving mystery.  We have just the perfect amount of sensors so that we can interact with our environments.  We see with our eyes because light is captured and lens-focused to our retinas that process the images of light and convert the images to electrical information that is passed to our brains through an optical nerve.  The brain then interprets this information to produce an image in our mind.  We don't see in our eyes.  We see in our brain.  Likewise, we don't feel in our hands, feet, elbows, or face.  We feel in our brain.  We don't taste in our tongue, we taste in our brain.  I think you see the pattern here, but do you get the point?  When our body gets injured, it heals itself.  When it's attacked by bacteria, viruses, etc., it defends itself.  It is constantly reproducing itself and metabolizing the old parts.  It has an endless data bank of built-in safety features to protect itself in almost any situation whether it be falling into freezing water, getting a foreign particle in your eye, getting trapped in an oxygen-deprived place, or being exposed to cold temperatures for a long period of time.  Regardless of the situation, our bodies have an emergency plan that they will follow to ensure the best chance of survival.

Humans are pretty awesome.  But, we're not alone.  Animals are pretty awesome, too.  And, fish are amazing.  And, birds.  Let's not forget plants.  My point is simple: Life is beautiful.  We all know it.  Since television was invented, shows have profited from displaying the beauty of the world's life and generations of people can't get enough of it.  When it comes to the life in our world, there is an infinite sea of interesting information to discuss, from the electric eel to a porcupine's quills to the owl's neck bone structure.

The generally accepted standpoint in the scientific community is that all of this happened by pure happenstance.  There was no intelligence directing any of it.  But that isn't very sensible.  What we observe in nature with an absence of intelligence interfering is destruction not construction.  We see things break down, deteriorate, etc.  Only with an intelligence present do we ever see the addition of information.  It doesn't take too long on the Internet to find debates on the subject and what you will typically find is that the defenders of "science" will obfuscate their arguments discussing genetic variation and erroneously attempting to pass off genetic variation with genetic information addition.  Variation does not equate to the addition of information.  Nor does it account for the introduction of the initial information.

DNA is really interesting.  It's where the biological information is stored that conducts your body's processes like a well-tuned orchestra.  It's not hard for us to tune out when we start getting told about the vast amount of information in a single DNA strand.  We can't wrap our minds around it.  So, it's easy for people to tell us and for us to accept that this vast bank of information could mix with another's vast bank of information (reproduction) and create some new information.  So, to dumb it down for us all, it's much easier to think about the commonly told origin of life.  It says there was no information and then suddenly there was.  What's more is that they postulate that from there more information just came about to produce more and more complexity.  The vehicle that supposedly drove this was the production of random variation, the survival of the variations that had advantageous mutations, and the death of variations that were at a disadvantage.  Since only the advantageous ones survived, they were the only ones that reproduced.  Life gets more and more complex and eventually evolves into you.  However, EVEN IF the first life, a very simple single-celled organism, were to have somehow happened into existence, it would have had information that makes it up.  But, why would it have replicated itself.  Or how?  Not only that, but we're being told that it replicated itself randomly to create variation so that future generations could have a better chance of survival.  Why would it do that?  Why would it care to survive?  Not to mention, how would information to produce something produce something different than the information it had to produce?

I wrote about it in my last blog so I'll only say it briefly here.  The odds are insurmountable against anything coming to life even under perfect circumstances and with all the pieces readily available. That should be enough to doubt.  Yet one can go further with it.  Nothing is ever said about the insurmountable odds against this newly created life having the ability and will to replicate itself to continue living and reproducing offspring.  Nor is anything ever postulated about why it would do such a thing.  Darwinism speaks tons about survival but it doesn't even attempt to explain the purpose of survival.  Why must all these things survive?  Why is it our will to survive?  Why is evolving into something else beneficial?  For that matter, what is a benefit?  Wouldn't it be logical to state that the benefit in death is that no more striving to survive is inherently gained?  The premise that all life sprung from a random and unintelligent source is irrational because it would have died from the lack of intelligence to recreate itself.  Perhaps only someone who knows nothing about the splitting of a cell or the splitting of DNA can say with any confidence that life could have recreated itself just because.  Even just the recreation of a single DNA strand is complex and requires several biological tools to perform the function without a slightest error.

Slightly off point, this reminds me of a movie I once watched, The Happening, written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan in the height of his success.  Warning: The rest of this paragraph is a spoiler.  The plot of the movie is that people start seemingly mindlessly killing themselves by any means they can quickly find.  This epidemic spreads as fast as the wind blows.  It started in multiple cities around the world and spread outwards.  The movie follows a high school teacher who struggles to survive the ordeal while also trying to figure out the cause.  The culprit winds up being the trees.  This is Hollywood so bear with me, but the trees supposedly have an intelligence, a will to survive, a collective conscience, and the ability to produce a spore or something like it that can be made to go airborne that alters the chemistry of humans and causes their will to survive to be suppressed.  This immediately makes the affected humans mindless, incoherent, suicide machines.  I mentioned this because I like the illustration of what would happen if our will to survive was suppressed.

So, then, the real question is where did our will to survive originate?  Interestingly enough, I can't seem to find any results on the Internet concerning the subject.  The Bible provides an answer to the question in Genesis 1.  After creating living creatures God said "Be fruitful and increase in number".  There you have it.  An intelligent designer that programmed in a will to survive.  See?  Whether you believe in God or not, the existence of a will to survive in all living creatures speaks volumes to the existence of an intelligence that both precedes life and is directly involved with the creation of said life.

Now, for the record, the word 'science' in the English language comes from the Latin word 'scientia' meaning knowledge.  This being the case, you may take notice of me being reluctant to speak against science itself. I may disagree with the scientific community, the science textbooks, or sometimes I'll just put the word science in quotes to denote that I'm referring to so-called science.  But, truth be told, I am a scientist.  So are you if you are seeking knowledge, studying our world, and working to gain an accurate understanding of the world we live in.  So, to be clear, this isn't a debate between the Bible and science.  The clash is between the Bible and a generation of people who have accepted the generally-accepted beliefs of so-called science.  What I am finding on my quest to develop a worldview that is logical, reasonable, sensible and truthful is that the Bible is where all science should begin.  The Bible even says this in Proverbs 1:7 "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge."  'Fear' in the sense of reverence, or understanding and paying proper respect to God's law. The Bible also mentions to steer clear of the so-called science I mentioned above in 1 Timothy 6:20-21 "Turn away from godless chatter and the opposing ideas of what is falsely called knowledge, which some have professed and in so doing have wandered away from the faith."  Take notice that not only does this verse specifically call out so-called science (knowledge) it mentions that this so-called science is full of opposing ideas (contradicting theories) and godless chatter (atheistic speak).

This battle for the truth is not a new one.  There have been people who denied the existence of God and denied His creative power ever since Paul wrote that letter to Timothy.  Undoubtedly, even long before that.  Romans 1:20 states "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse."  He created all things gloriously so that we could easily see and understand His glory.  We are truly without excuse.

God created the world.  Furthermore, He told us how long it took Him to do it.  He wasn't being poetic about the six days.  It wasn't spoken in metaphors.  He said six days and six days is what He meant.

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6,000 Years +/-

The age of the earth is a tough topic.  Most people believe that the earth is billions of years old.  They believe this not necessarily because they have extensively studied it themselves, but more than likely because they've been told in ridiculous repetition that it's old.  Even in my adulthood, I can't hardly go a week without hearing it said or reading it in print somewhere.  The news can't get enough of every study they can get their hands on that tells us something about our "distant" past.  Countless children's books and shows on public broadcasting channels start right out of the gate with "Millions of years ago..." almost completely replacing the phrase "Once upon a time."  I certainly can't blame a person for thinking that it's old.  Nor can I blame them for not doing any of their own research.  Why should they waste their time determining something that the "experts" have already accepted as a given?

Broaching the subject gets even harder for a Christian.  We're torn between all that we've heard and been taught by our secular educations and what we read in the Bible, assuming we read our Bibles.  Genesis presents a creation week that God created everything in six days and then rested on the seventh.  Our educations, on the other hand, tell us that everything sort of happened on its own over the course of billions of years.  Christians who would rather fit in both crowds (like me for most of my adult life) postulate that God did create everything over the course of billions of years, a sort of God-directed evolution, if you will.  And, while that sounds good and seems to promote an "everybody's correct on the subject" platform which is awfully popular, it has a major flaw for the Christian: The Bible doesn't say billions of years; it says six days.

I'll touch on that in a moment, though.  Maybe you, the person reading this, are not a Christian, and you don't really care what the Bible says on the subject because you don't view the Bible as an authority on the subject of the age of the earth.  I get that.  You're being consistent with your beliefs and I can admire that.  So, let's first just look at the secular side of it.

I wrote about uniformitarianism in my last blog and explained how even scientists themselves must admit that it's nothing more than a belief and yet it is continued to be used as a platform from which to build all scientific theory.  In short, uniformitarianism is the belief that the rates at which things happen today (which can be observed) are the same as they have always been in the past (which cannot be observed).  This assumption is being used in geology, biology, astronomy, virtually all modern sciences.  But, it's not science.  It's a belief about the past that is not testable, not observable, and not provable.  So, rather than start with assumptions of ages, let's start with a clean slate and examine some evidence ourselves and apply some logic and reason.

Let's look at biology, more specifically, yourself, for example. Unless there is something abnormal with your biology, if you engaged in well-timed procreation activities with the opposite sex you could expect to successfully reproduce offspring.  But, what would you reproduce?  A human, right?  How do you know?  You know because you observe, as do all of us, that all creatures on this planet produce only their own kind.  No human has ever nor will ever produce a puppy.

Science textbooks allow this widely-known fact to go unmentioned while they instead teach that all life came from the same source.  However, this inherently means that creatures do not always produce only their own kind.  Rather, the textbooks teach us that we produce ever-so-slightly different creatures with every generation.

Genesis 1:20-25, on the other hand, accounts for this as it says that when God created all creatures they would produce after their own kind.  The textbooks would have you believe differently from both what God said and from what you know to be true through your own observations.

The textbook's take on the matter leaves much to be desired in regards to sensibility.  In fact, it raises more questions than it answers.  If all life has a common ancestor, the first living thing, how and why did it have the ability and will to reproduce itself?  Don't just speed read through this, please think about it.  It's truly unfathomable when you really weigh it mentally.  Assuming that life could be spawned by accident, a perfect storm of the right conditions, they guess, how did it know to reproduce to maintain life?  Why didn't it just die?  We're expected to believe that NOT ONLY did such an incredible event take place that initially spawned the first life despite a veritable zero chance of possibility but that the first life ALSO knew to keep this new-fangled thing called life going by unfailingly reproducing itself.  Really?  Statistically speaking, that belief is laughable.

Let's explore genetics a bit, as well.  Ever wonder where all the different people groups came from?  Science books, and unfortunately our culture, call them 'races' of people, but let's look into this a bit from an historical perspective.  Before the popularization of the theories of evolution and a singular common ancestor, everyone understood the obvious which is that humans are humans.  They all look different whether from different continents or even from parents to children.  To some degree, we are all unique from others, our own immediate families included.  Yes, we can be lumped together based upon our skin pigment, hair color, eye shape, etc.  But regardless of our differences, it was well understood that we were all of one kind, species, race, whatever you want to call it.  However, since these theories have spread and have been taught to generations, new ideas have arisen concerning the human race.  To explain the visual differences in humans from different geographical locations, it was suggested that different people groups evolved at different rates.  Is this ringing bells from your childhood education?  I hope it's sounding an alarm.  Here's why.  The problem with such an idea is that it inherently means that some humans are more advanced in evolution than others.  Swallowing hook, line, and sinker that the textbooks are correct on this subject, justifies the belief that some people groups are more like their "ape-like" ancestors than others.  It's a racist philosophy.

Many people think that the case is closed on the subject of race.  They are completely unaware of the ongoing and heated scientific debate that has been boiling since Darwin's publication of the Origin of Species.  In 1995 it was announced by several biologists that "race has no biological basis."  Instead, they claimed that 'race' was completely a social construct.  Richard Lewontin, a Harvard geneticist, argued in 1972 that, since there was greater genetic variation within any given race than between races, the very concept of race was not a useful way to understand genetic variation in humans.  Did you catch that?  There is more genetic variation within a so-called race than there is variation between different so called races.  Furthermore, the visual differences we see between people from different geographic areas make up a mere fraction of a percent in the human genome.  In fact, in terms of organ transplants, a person is statistically more likely to find a viable match from someone in a different people group than from someone in their own group.

Once again, if one were to take the Bible's word for it concerning the subject, what geneticists and biologists are finding makes much more sense.  In contrast, the theory of evolution is complicating the subject with juxtapositions being made fueling a debate that cannot be settled sense the observable science does not support the evolutionary worldview held by the majority.  It's clear that these academics are not allowing themselves to be led to the conclusion that the evidence would lead them.  This is a rejection of the scientific method.

How does all this biology talk play into the age of the earth, you ask?  Well, it sort of doesn't directly.  Sorry about that.  But, I will show you how it does indirectly.  Due to the astonishingly low .1 percent difference in the human genome (total amount of human DNA) it would suggest that we haven't had very much time to establish much genetic variation.  It would also suggest that all humans therefore came from a single source of human DNA.  Combining genetic variation and mathematics, the evidence supports that human DNA has only been around thousands of years, not hundreds of thousands of years and descended from other primates millions of years ago.  And, if humans are "young" then the science used that claims they are "old" is flawed.  The Bible's written account is supported while the model provided by evolutionists contradicts what is found in genetics.  If you apply these mistaken ages to other sciences and their "findings" then everything on earth gets much younger.  It's becoming more clear that the billions-year-old-earth standpoint is inconsistent with the findings of genetics.

I realize that I have really over-typed your patience, but I'm hoping that you're reading this and seeing some good evidence to make you start to question what you've been taught.  I believe that there is probably less than 1 percent of people who have actually done their own research to form their conclusions on their beliefs.  The vast majority are taught what to believe and they've never questioned it.  There is a famous saying that I learned in public school attributed to Isaac Newton that states "If I see further it's because I stand on the shoulders of giants."  It's obviously referring to a person being able to pick up where others left off and build upon what they've already done.  But, there is a terrible error looming here.  What if someone was wrong?  What if they veered off the path of logical pursuit and into the territory of agenda-driven philosophy?  Wouldn't all who "stood on their shoulders" be prone to making the same mistakes?

One of the interesting things I've found about science is when I was reading about reification, a logical fallacy that is when something abstract is referred to as something concrete.  Referring to unprovable theories as fact would be a good example of this. I stumbled across this on Wikipedia when reading about reification:

The concept of a "construct" has a long history in science; it is used in many, if not most, areas of science. A construct is a hypothetical explanatory variable that is not directly observable.  The degree to which a construct is useful and accepted in the scientific community depends on empirical research that has demonstrated that a scientific construct has construct validity (especially, predictive validity).[9] Thus, if properly understood and empirically corroborated, the "reification fallacy" applied to scientific constructs is not a fallacy at all; it is one part of theory creation and evaluation in normal science.

So, did you catch that?  Science gets a free pass to tout fallacies as truth as long as they are measurable and can produce predictable results.  But, what's a predictable result on a fallacious test?  I'll tell you what it is.  It's receiving the results that you predicted you would get.  That's a fallacy in itself.  It's circular reasoning.  You got what you wanted because your criteria is set up to correlate to your desired result.  And they humorously call it "predictive validity".  The irony is that when tests are performed that contradict their desired results they simply ignore them as if they don't exist.  Such as, when diamonds thought to be 1-3 billion years old and related to earth's early history are tested for radiocarbon and shouldn't have any but do in fact have significant detectable levels that date them around 55,000 years old by their own standards, no one in the scientific community cries foul.  No one pulls the emergency brake to reexamine their assumptions.  They don't even attempt to fix what they say about diamonds.  They just go on claiming what they want to claim despite their inconsistencies.

In astronomy, one needs to look no further than our moon to find a huge problem with "old earth" philosophy.  Astronomers have found that the moon is slowly moving away from earth in its orbit.  So, in the past, the moon was closer to earth.  If the earth is only about 6,000 years old then there isn't a problem because in that time the moon would have only been about 800 feet closer to earth in its beginning.  However, astronomers also believe the moon to be 4 billion years old.  This poses a major problem since the moon would have been touching the earth less than 1.5 billion years ago.  I searched the Internet for an "old earth" response to this problem and the only thing that I could find was a comment on a Physics page where someone stated that this wasn't a problem at all because while the earth was still very young 4.5 billion years ago and still mostly liquid, another planet collided with it and all the pieces formed the moon.  There was more to the comment but I'm floored by how easy it is for people to believe such theories.  Why is it so much easier for them to make up "possible" scenarios and claim them to be fact.  Especially, since this doesn't deal with the problem at all.  It fails to answer the question and only raises more questions.

And lastly, how about anthropology?  The world's population is a fun one for me.  Why?  Because I like math.  And, I like Microsoft Excel.  Excel allows me to do complicated math formulas faster which is why I like it.  Subconsciously, I think I probably like it also for its grid.  It looks like graph paper, and I like graph paper.  But, back to what I was talking about before I started listing off all the nerdy things I like, the world's population is a great topic because anyone who can do basic math can see that something is amiss with an "old earth" philosophy.  Let's start with some obvious basics.  The world's human population is growing.  Duh, right?  But, we don't know what the earth's population is at any given moment.  It's estimated that the world's population is growing by 2 every second.  This means that more babies are being born than people are dying on average at any given moment.  Let's build a model to makes sense of world population growth.  For our model we will assume that the population doubles every 150 years.  That's a super conservative figure, by the way.  The US Census office estimates that it's closer to doubling every 40 years.  However, for the sake of argument, let's stick with a conservative figure.

Before I begin, though, I'd like to clear something up about exponential growth that most people don't think about in terms of graphs.  Look at the graph here.  Most people, myself included, see this graph on world population and take away from it that the world's population is growing at a rate leaps and bounds faster than it ever has.  They assume that this must be due to a combination of technology and modern medicine.  But, understand that this is what all exponential graphs look like.  This is why people don't get compounding interest.  There's a mathematical riddle, of sorts, that people are fond of that basically asks a person if they'd rather have a million dollars or a penny that gets doubled for thirty days straight.  Most people would go for the million, but are smart enough to know that there's a trick they aren't seeing and that they're probably choosing unwisely.  And, their hunch is right.  The penny doubling for 30 days winds up to be over ten million dollars.  You can check this out yourself with any basic calculator (.01 X 2, hit = 30 times).  So, understand this: it's true that the population is growing leaps and bounds in recent years compared to centuries past, however this is because there are more people to create more babies NOT because people are having more babies.  The RATE of growth surely changed but its unlikely it has changed much.

So, back to our model of world population, let's assume that the flood described in Genesis really happened.  So, afterwards, we have 8 people (Noah, his wife, his three sons and their wives) and a devastated planet with which to start over around 2500 BC.  If we assume the aforementioned conservative rate of doubling the population every 150 years and we start with the three sons and their wives, what we get is the graph you see here.  This calculates to just shy of 8.6 billion people in the year 2000, not too far off from the roughly 7 billion currently estimated, right?  Also, the graph appears to match the one we saw above, though as I mentioned before all exponential graphs will look like this.

According to Wikipedia, anatomically modern humans (known as Homo sapiens sapiens) began 200,000 years ago.  Luckily, Excel is awesome and I can quickly change my spreadsheet to graph out what just two first humans 200,000 years ago would have produced today using the same super-conservative population growth rate.  But, I ran into a problem.  My screen isn't large enough to show the whole number.  In fact, by the time it got to just 100,000 years ago, the world's population calculated to a number with 190 digits!  So, let's try again with an even MORE conservative growth rate.  Let's change the growth rate from doubling every 150 years to doubling every 1,000 years.  That's crazy slow.  Think about it.  In 1,000 years you can easily expect there to be 25 generations at a generation every 40 years.  25 generations and finally double?  But, even with these crazy numbers, the population today would be 61 digits long!  Don't forget that our present population only has 10 digits.

What's also wild to think about is that Wikipedia also claims that our supposedly most recent ancestor, the Neanderthals (or Homo sapiens) began 500,000 years ago.  What happened to all of them?  Did they all die?  Because, if they evolved, then my goodness, I don't even want to attempt that Excel spreadsheet.  But, if they all died (300,000 years worth of population growth, mind you), what killed them?

Evolution's only hope concerning this anthropological problem is that you can't do math.  What's truly ironic is that those who believe in an old earth and the evolution of mankind will argue with the math I have provided and say that I can't assume that the rate of population growth has remained constant and that there were times in mankind's past that natural disasters occurred that wiped out huge swaths of the global population.  The reason that it's ironic is because they would be being inconsistent.  Remember how I started out this blog mentioning uniformitarianism as an underlying fallacy that leads modern science astray?  It leads them astray because they don't account for natural disasters or unknown factors to have affected any of the evidence they are looking at.  So, the irony is that if they were at all consistent, they would have no explanation for the question 'Where are all the people?'  I've even thrown them a bone by only starting with 2 humans with their time frame.  They maintain it was more like 10,000 to 50,000.  But, no matter how you fudge the numbers, the math just doesn't work.

Hopefully, I have given you enough to chew on, enough to entice you to look further into what you believe and perhaps ask yourself why you believe what you do.  We shouldn't ever find ourselves ardently believing something without a viable explanation to back up those beliefs.  God doesn't ask us to do that.  He isn't scared of our questions and doesn't hold back information from us.  Rather, I believe that God gets excited the further out we look, the deeper in we look, and the harder we search for truth.  He's not unreachable nor unknowable.  He wants us to find Him.  He wants to show us the way.  But, too often, we're good just to be where we are.  We're content with just thinking we have it all figured out.

The Bible is correct.  The earth was created by God.  It was created just like His word tells us it was.  For those Christians who have always believed in an old earth, please take notice that Jesus knew the earth had a beginning and he placed man and woman at that beginning, not billions of years later (Matthew 19:4).

The science books have done us all a great disservice.  They have an atheistic worldview that removed God from His rightful glory of creating all things.  They would have you believe that you are an accident and that your life is utterly meaningless and that when you die there will be nothing more.  But, deep inside, we all know that none of that is true.  We all know that there is meaning, that we have purpose, that there is more than just the physical.  Everything in us speaks to it.  The Holy Spirit speaks it to us.  Don't continue to rob God of the glory that is His alone.

Like all my blogs, feel free to leave a comment if you have a question or a rebuttal or whatever.

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Shaky Foundations

I went through my childhood like all children.  I believed what I was told.  But, at some point, I started to question things that didn't make sense to me and I wouldn't stop questioning things that seemingly contradicted each other.  My story isn't at all special, though.  All children do this.  If you're reading this, then you did it, too.  It's all part of learning.  Small children take things at face value and do not need a logical order to the different aspects of how they believe life functions.  Though, at a certain age, once their cognitive abilities reach a certain level, they begin to recognize that some things that they've been told don't sit well with others.  That's when they begin asking adults questions trying to sort out their mental inconsistencies.

Anyone who has raised children past six years old knows this is true and has seen it for themselves.  Sometimes, those inquiring children have a hard time accepting the answers that they are being given.  They might start to present rebuttals that seem to turn into arguments.  Sometimes the adults working with them through this process get frustrated and don't understand why the child is having such a hard time "getting it."

What has transpired here is that the child has developed a worldview that is being challenged.  Their worldview is a complex mess of memories of what they've been told, experiences they've had, and what they've chosen to believe.  Some aspects of their worldview have solidified into perceived truths that may be correct or may not be.  And, when presented with answers to their questions that challenge these perceived truths, they can't just accept the new information.  They have to have it make sense alongside all their other previously stored information.  However, children don't always understand how to go about making sense of their thoughts.  They don't ask the right questions and commonly wear their emotions on their sleeve which may come out as a not-so-very polite tone.  Unfortunately, myself included, parents don't remember all this and start to get frustrated with their children and the way they are handling the conversation.  But, we should all try to understand and relate that these children are demonstrating the emotions that come with having a worldview challenged.  And, unlike well-trained adults, they don't have filters yet that keep their emotions at bay while they perform these mental gymnastics.  I say "well-trained adults" because most adults will behave somewhat like the children I have described here when their worldview is challenged, as well.

*** If you haven't read my last blog, The Power of a Worldview, please do so now.  I think it's pretty important that you start with that knowledge before continuing where I plan on taking you in this blog. ***

It's understandable that we lash out in defense when our worldview is challenged, though.  Our worldview is what we believe to be true and when that "truth" is threatened by new information, our intellectual foundation is literally shaken.  I would highly recommend, however, that you make every effort to suppress your emotions and explore new information given to you for if you are actually harboring incorrect thinking and someone or something comes along that delivers to you truth you most certainly wouldn't want to mindlessly reject it simply because it doesn't align with your believed untruths. Truth doesn't align with untruths.

In the last blog, I teased you with statements including "we've all been lied to"  and "step into the rabbit hole".  I don't apologize for the teasing, though I know it's a literary trick to build suspense.  I'll try to refrain from drawing it out any further and just jump right in with both feet.

If, like me, you've been publicly educated then you've learned some things that have become your intellectual foundation.  They are as follows in no particular order:

The earth is old, somewhere around 4.5 billion years.
All life sprung from a happenstance mixture of chemicals and perhaps lightning?
Life evolved into different complex creatures that evolved further into other complex creatures that evolved... etc.
The earth may be old, but the universe is older.
Natural laws (or physics) dictate all things.
The greenhouse effect is the cause for glacier depletion.


This will likely set off your worldview alarm.  So prepare yourself...

All these things in the list above are not true.

Now, reading a blog may or may not be effective in swaying you into the realm of being able to challenge your worldview.  But, I'm going to try to get you there.  And, you shouldn't be alarmed.  The intellectual gymnastics we are about to do can't hurt you.  You will either decide that I'm wrong and affirm your current worldview which feels pretty good, or you will find that I am on to something truthful at which point you will find yourself on a path to finding an assurance and a hope you've never known.  So, with all fear cast aside and our emotions properly tamed, let's begin.

Uniformitarianism is the belief that the rate at which things happen today is the rate that they have always happened.  It's a belief, not a truth, and it's flawed because it's based of the assumption that the conditions surrounding the thing in question have never changed.  Note that I used the word 'never'.  This suggests inherently that there is also no beginning to the material in question which I've properly stated since uniformitarianism, in addition to not allowing for changing conditions, equally does not allow for a beginning.

Uniformitarianism is a "first principle" of virtually all fields of modern science.  Wikipedia states that a first principle is a "basic, foundational proposition or assumption."  Wikipedia then states a proposition is an "object of belief."  So, don't take just my word for it.  Let it be known that all modern science is based off of assumption and belief, not fact.

Here's the problem.  When you start with an untrue statement as your foundation, you are going to have a terrible time trying to arrive at a truthful one at the end.  Now, it could be argued "it's not an untrue statement, it's a logical assumption."  I would argue back that an assumption can, in fact, be wrong and often is and that it's not logical at all to assume that conditions don't change.  Especially since we can observe in nature that conditions change all the time.

I hear people talk about "science" as if it's all proven fact, above reproach, and unquestionable.  I have seen countless times where people questioning it or challenging it won't even get their argument heard but will instead just receive a barrage of condescending remarks about how stupid they must be.  But, this behavior is simply people refusing to listen to new information and lashing out in defense of their worldview, the worldview they were taught to adopt.

But, what I am here to tell you today is that what we were taught was and is wrong.  It's wrong because it's all based on belief, just as I said earlier and to which Wikipedia attests. It's the belief that the Bible must not be true what it tells us about creation because that would imply that it's true about other things it teaches which tells us that we are not our own and we so desperately want to be our own master of our universe.

Rewind to the 19th century.  The majority of the world believed that God created the world just as it was written in the book of Genesis.  Many cultures that had no access to the Bible even believed that the world was intelligently and supernaturally created.  Atheists were a minority.  Yet, there were some in influential positions.  They were determined to find an alternative explanation to the existence of all matter, one that wouldn't require intelligence nor supernatural actions.  This is called Naturalism, the belief that nature is all there is.  They hashed out their theories to support Naturalism which, as I mentioned before, are all based on belief and assumptions.  Yet, a sinful, selfish populace began to pick it up and adopt these beliefs as their own.  For them, the removal of a God who would judge them for their lusts was a new kind of salvation.  They were saved from damnation not because they were granted pardon, but because they adopted a new worldview that denied the very existence of a God who would pass judgement.

Like I spoke about in my last blog, the trouble with adopting a worldview that is all based on belief and assumption is that there is no true satisfaction, no intellectual contentment.  More troubling, is that if they were right and there was no God and nature was all there is, then there is no hope.  We are all destined to die and everything that happens from womb to tomb is utterly meaningless.

So, in an effort to abate their intellectual discontent and hopelessness, they set out to convince others.  Over the years as their numbers and influence grew, they wrote books about it, published studies about it, added it to school textbooks, inserted it into children's books, made movies about it, produced television shows about it, etc.  They pronounced themselves as the authority on the subject.  And because it was just the alternative that a people whose ears enjoyed tickling wanted to hear, it spread until the theories, while completely unsubstantiated in truth, infiltrated the minds of generations.  See, you can act like something is true, talk about it as if it's true, refer to to it as a fact, and use it as a basis for other untrue statements all day long, but none of that makes it true.  However, it may make it be adopted as truth in the minds of the people listening.

Now, as one of the minority who believes the Bible over the beliefs of atheists concerning this subject, I say to you that:

The earth is roughly 6,000 years old.
All life sprung from the Word of God.
Just as they were told to do, all kinds of life reproduced according to its kind.
The earth and all known matter were made during a 6-day period.
God wrote the natural laws that dictate all things, but remains supernatural and can act as such.
Glacier depletion has been happening since the global flood roughly 4,000 years ago.

Long before the popularity of naturalism, we were told in clear and plain language about the truth of how all things came about.  God began his Word to us in the first book of the Bible with this foundational knowledge because He knew we needed a proper platform from which to build our understanding of Him.  Popular modern thinking tries to rewrite this account.  Christians who have this worldview try desperately to marry the two, yet it cannot be done.  God wants us to understand.  He is not a God who purposefully misdirects us.  He says "seek and you shall find."  He made it very clear in His Word and all creation attests to His glory and the reality of a Creator.  I am convinced that if you set out to justify a godless existence, you will find just that.  I am equally convinced that the opposite is true.  For that which we seek, we find.  That is our choice.  It is our freedom.  He does not force our love.  And, He makes His readily available to us if we would only seek it.

I can't write a blog long enough to cover every question that you might have. I certainly can't list out all the reasons I believe that the above statements are true.  So, I would like to open up the comment section below for discussion.  Comments can be made anonymous if you would like.  These blogs stay posted indefinitely so feel free to comment if you have a question about anything that I have said here regardless of how old this post is.  I welcome opposing arguments.  But, stay polite, please.  Rude behavior won't be tolerated regardless of its position.

P.S.  I just had a great idea, though.  I think that I'll write individual blogs explaining why my 6 statements are true over the course of the next few weeks.  So, if you would rather wait and read those than comment here, I commend you for your patience.  But, please don't let me discourage you from commenting here if you'd rather get a conversation started.  I love this topic and am excited to find out more about it through talking with others.

Photo credit to http://www.dailymail.co.uk

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The Power of a Worldview

world·view

wərldˈvyo͞o/

noun

 a particular philosophy of life or conception of the world.

In recent years, I've seen the word 'worldview' pop up a lot in books that I've read.  I thought that I understood the word and its definition, but now I'm certain that I didn't fully get it.  To be fair, short and sweet definitions like the one above didn't help me to grasp the importance or power of a worldview.

Think about it this way.  When you are presented new information, whatever it be, your brain quickly references other information previously stored that pertains to the new and crosschecks it to make sure that the new information makes sense and is true.  The more applicable previously stored information you have available to reference, the quicker your brain can let you know whether the new information you are receiving is worth considering or if you should put up your intellectual guard.  This is all done in a flash.  For example, if your coworker passively mentioned to you that the Big Mac he was eating for lunch cost him $104, you would immediately know that that cannot be true based off of all your personal experience.  He would see the look on your face change almost as quickly (our facial muscles aren't quite as fast as our gray matter) and then he would clarify that he got a $100 speeding ticket on the way back from McDonald's.  You would then release the facial expression you were holding throughout your coworker's explanation and probably say something like, "Oh, now I see."

What happened in my example was that your brain would not accept your coworker's statement as being true.  You knew that Big Macs cost somewhere around $4 or less and you knew that your coworker wasn't a complete fool to have paid McDonald's $104 for one.  Your brain rightly alerted you that something wasn't right with the new information that was being given to you.

We all do the exact same thing all the time with all new information given to us.  We can't help it.  It's how we are made.  We are logical beings.  And, because we all have a different set of experiences, we all react differently to different information.  Similar experiences likely draw similar reactions.

Now, where it gets interesting is that most of us have been led to believe by our homogenized public education that we can be objective observers if we choose to be.  We think that to look at something scientifically is to look at it objectively.  I would wholly disagree with that based off of what I have already discussed here so far.  There is no such thing as a human being being objective while taking in new information.  Our brains simply do not operate that way.  We can no more choose to be objective than we can choose to refrain from digesting our eaten lunch.

Our worldview is our collective experience boiled down to our decided beliefs.  All new information is crosschecked by our worldview.  It may be better thought of as a set of filters on our mind.  Our worldview is strengthened and made more mentally valid the more experiences we have that validate it.  Right or wrong, our worldview dictates to us what information may be considered and processed and what information isn't worth considering or processing.

A definition for 'worldview' is probably better understood when given the synonym 'bias'.  Interestingly enough, thesaurus.com doesn't agree with me that bias is a synonym for worldview.  They have similar, and somewhat overlapping, synonym lists but they aren't given as synonyms for each other.  However, I feel they should be.  Our worldviews are not at all easily changed or adapted.  People may change their minds on fringe issues, but a change of worldview is totally life-altering.  Because, it's the foundation of all our other beliefs.  It's the filter to everything we have allowed ourselves to consider.  It's the core beliefs that we hold that are the cornerstone to our intellectual identities.

Even when we force ourselves to consider something that our worldview does not allow, all of our considerations are bent by our worldview.  Our worldview becomes a master over our mind and we are its slave.  That's not to say that we can't revolt.  We can.  But, it's nothing short of momentous when that happens.  It's most certainly not an often occurrence.  Quite the opposite, we rely on our worldview to help us understand our lives and the world around us.  It can be a good relationship between your worldview and yourself, but all too often it resembles more of an unhealthy codependency.  You need the reassurance of your worldview that simultaneously requires you to be its crutch supporting it with newly found evidences that support its decided truths.  Of course, when you're out to find evidence to support what you've already decided to be true, you will find evidence.  But, evidence doesn't make something true.  Evidence in itself requires interpretation.  Interpretation is done by individuals.  And, as we've discussed at length so far, individuals are flawed and have deeply ingrained set limitations on where they will allow the evidence to take them.  Their worldview is that hall monitor with tyrannical power.

All that said, I plan on writing a blog this week for which I know most people's worldview will discard it to the spam folder.  I know that you cannot read this blog objectively.  Your brain will make judgements throughout the text.  But, I challenge you to keep reading it anyway.  I challenge you to consider the information against the advice of your worldview.  You may be asking why I would want you to read it or why there would be any benefit to you to read it.  It's because I think we were all lied to.  I think that we were all fed information throughout our entire formative years that was specifically designed to create a worldview in us that would filter out the truth.  I believe that correcting this implanted aspect of our worldview is crucial to being able to accept and retain the truth of this world.  But, I'll warn you.  It's not for the faint of mind.  Having your worldview challenged isn't exactly a picnic, unless you go the route of intellectual self-protection and dismiss the challenge.  If, on the other hand, you resist the urge to dismiss and you instead step into the rabbit hole to see how deep it goes, I believe that you will find a new ability to step free of the binds with which your worldview has held you captive.  I believe that freedom will lead you to finding a much more satisfying worldview, one that allows for hope and a greater logical understanding of our world.

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Lottery "Winner"

There's been a lot of talk about Powerball around the office for the last week or so.  With the jackpot reaching $1.5 billion, it has probably propelled even non-gamblers into the arena of ticket purchases.  I certainly don't blame anyone for doing so.  It's a dream that everyone has, I'm sure.  At one time or another (if not lots of times) all of us have dreamed about what it would be like to come across a seemingly endless supply of money.

Now the sad reality is that the jackpot is entirely comprised of lost and wasted money.  It's not quite as alluring when you think of it in those terms.  That money comes pretty much from the bottom of society, financially speaking, and is paid to someone who gets unpreparedly thrust to the top.  It's a backwards Robin Hood effect.  ThinkProgress stated the following concerning the subject.

And it’s those who can least afford to lose any money who are most likely to be buying tickets. Low-income people account for the majority of lottery sales, while sales are highest in the poorest areas. One study found that the poorest third of households buy more than half of the tickets sold in any given week.

Profit from those ticket sales go to government coffers. The share of lottery profits that is paid out to players varies greatly by state, from just 15 percent in West Virginia to 76 percent in Massachusetts. But even that smaller share in the latter state is an important source of revenue. In 2009, lotteries in 11 states brought in more revenue than the corporate income tax. And thus the lottery acts like an implicit 38 percent tax on mainly the poorest people.

Others suppose that there is a curse on lottery winners.  NYDailyNews lists a select few of the known disasters to the lives of lottery winners as

• Abraham Shakespeare - won $30 million in 2006 and was so hounded by family and friends for money that he desperately transferred his assets to his newfound female friend who offered to help him avoid those seeking money from him only to be murdered by her shortly afterwards.
• David Edwards - won $27 million in 2001, returned to drug abuse, spent it all, had almost nothing to show for it after living in a storage unit and then dying in 2013 on hospice at only 58.
• Jeffery Dampier - won $20 million and reportedly showered his family with cash and gifts and yet was kidnapped and shot in the back of the head by his sister-in-law.
• Urooj Khan - won $1 million and was found dead the next day of apparent cyanide poisoning.  Despite both his sister-in-law and father being suspected of being involved, no one was ever charged.
• Michael Carroll - won $15 million in 2002 and managed to burn through all of it on parties, prostitutes, and cocaine so that he was left with nothing when he was finally jailed in 2006 for drug possession.
• William Post - won $16 million and managed to be $1 million in debt just one year later.  He was forced to declare bankruptcy, his own brother was arrested for hiring a man to kill him, and he died while on food stamps at 66 years old.
• Jack Whitaker - was already worth $17 million when he won $315 million in the lottery. He had churches built and donated 10% to Christian charities and even started a charity to provide food and clothes to low-income families.  But, his life fell apart when he became an alcoholic, had his wife leave him, was robbed twice, was sued, had his granddaughter and her boyfriend die of drug-overdoses while she lived on a weekly allowance from him, and even had his daughter die of unknown causes.  Both he and his ex-wife said that they had wished that he had torn the winning ticket up.
• Evelyn Adams - won the lottery twice in two consecutive years totaling $5.3 million and then gambled it all away at casinos in a short span.
• Billie Harrell Jr. - won $31 million, donated money to those in need, lent cash to close friends, but when he went broke two years later, his wife left him and he subsequently committed suicide.  Before his death, he said "winning the lottery is the worst thing that ever happened to me."

The article where I found all this stated that nearly 70% of lottery winners wind up broke within seven years.  I don't know that there is a "curse" per se on the lottery, but I am not sure there isn't.  Perhaps, and more likely, it's that when you take a normal person with normal problems and you very publicly pour money into their lives whereby exponentially amplifying their finances they also have their problems exponentially amplified in turn.

It makes you wonder.  Before I read all the crazy stuff above, I was already aware that I would have to bump up my family's security if I were to win (not that I play the lottery, I don't).  I would want some things that we don't have now, sure.  But, I realized that along with that, I would need to hire some security or something, because it's not living confortably if you're living in fear of being robbed or threatened.  When people know you have money, it likely attracts people who would like to take that money from you if given the opportunity.

Come to think of it, I'm willing to bet that most people are forced to move to avoid all the people who would just show up looking for a handout.  That would have to be unfortunate.  Just to have to uproot your life because of something "good" happening to you.

All this makes me think about one thing.  I will never win the lottery.  I know this because I don't play the lottery.  And, I understand that not playing the lottery seriously diminishes the chances of a person winning them.  That said, I will live in luxury some day.  I will live in a palace built by the King of Kings and I'll get to hang out with Him face to face.  I will dine with Him and I think that I'll even get to play soccer with Him.  I won't have to worry about security, or financial advisers, shady accountants, or anything.  I'll be taken care of and I will want for nothing.  I won't have to go to work and I'll get to chill with the family all day.  Jesus already won what matters for me, so I don't need to win anything.  With that knowledge, I don't need to want for anything here either.  I don't need to worry, because I'm already being taken care of regardless of what my circumstances may look like.  Just like a lottery winner, I didn't do anything that makes me "deserve" what was given to me.  But, far unlike a lottery winner, what was given to me cannot be taken away, lost, or destroyed.  AND, I can share all I want!  It never runs out!

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"You're no Daisy at all"

Last Monday, we drove to Bolivar to pick up a dog.  Daisy was her name.  She was a rambunctious 10-month old golden retriever/lab mix.  She was a beautiful and sweet dog who I only heard bark a couple times.  Pretty ideal for us, really.  However, she had one big draw back.  She liked to jump up on us in her excitement to say hello.

(Sorry about the confusing picture if you've never watched Tombstone.  If you have watched it, then surely you understand the reference in combination with the title of this blog.)

She scared Ezra pretty bad their first day together when Daisy jumped up on her and knocked her to the ground.  Daisy wrestled on top of her, no doubt, just thinking that Ezra was having as much fun as she was having.  Lyric had to tackle Daisy off of Ezra big brother style.  But, Daisy jumps on him, too.  She's not a large dog, but she's pretty strong.  And, she overpowers even Lyric.  She jumps on me, too, but I don't have any trouble pushing her off to the side every time she tries.  She figures out pretty quick not to continue it.  Yet, she still has to relearn it every time we meet for the day.  Our cat, Cute (yes, that's her name), was not fond at all of adding a dog to our family.  I figured that they'd get to know each other eventually and get along, but I wonder if that would ever really happen.

Confession:  We aren't dog people.  I always knew this about myself.  And, Jodi knew it about herself, too.  We only got a dog because Lyric wanted one.  And, we got a good one, admittedly.  After the initial jumping and discouraging shoves from me, she would follow me around and be pretty good company.  She was fun to play with and had a lot of cute personality.

Alas, despite all the good about this dog, we had to find a new home for her.  Which we did.  And, I'm thankful for the couple that came and picked her up.  They're dog people.  They have a couple smaller dogs and had been looking for a good lab for some time since their older lab had died.  They treat their dogs like their children and even sent us a picture of Daisy playing with her new siblings in her new fenced-in backyard.

We had her for six days.  It was a good learning experience for Lyric and Ezra both, I think.  It showed them that while they love the idea of having a dog, the reality of caring for one is maybe more than what they really want.  We aren't fully opposed to getting a dog for them when we are more prepared for one, but I think that with this experience under their belt they will be more wise with what kind of dog they're looking for.  I personally think that they'd be more compatible with an old lazy dog.

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Poorly Installed Electrical Recepticle Quick Fix

I'm not prone to posting "how to" videos, but I am commonly searching them out and have been helped tremendously through the years by those willing to post them, so I thought as I do things that others may find helpful, I should document what I am doing to help them out when they go searching the Internet for help.

This is a fix for those wall outlets that are too far back to properly put a wall plate on.  This also fixes wall outlets that move around when you go to plug something into them.  The root problem is the same: the electrical box was installed too deep in the wall.  A properly installed box will take into account the thickness of the drywall to be hung so that once the drywall is hung the box will be flush with the surface of the finished wall.

This outlet had a box that was way too far back and I couldn't even put a wall plate on it with the screw that came with it.  I had to find a longer screw to attach it but it still looked terrible with the outlet so deep.

To be safe, flip the breaker to the off position for the circuit that you will be working on.  Confirm that there is no power in the outlet by testing it with something.

Remove the wall plate.  Then, remove the outlet by taking the top and bottom screws completely out.

Reinstall the outlet but add some washers to the backside of the screw so that the outlet will stand further out.  I used two nuts for a larger sized screw in place of washers since I had so much distance to make up.

Add back the wall plate.  Add more washers or take some away as needed to acquire a perfect fit.  The wall plate should be snug to the wall on all four sides and the outlet should be flush to the surface of the wall plate.  If your wall plate starts to bend into a convex shape as you are attaching it, the outlet likely needs to be further out so add more washers.

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