Self-Identification, The New Reality?

Is this really a debate?  I mean, really?  How is this discussion of "transgender bathroom rights" even a thing?

If you don't care to read the article I linked to above (I don't blame you) here is a summary:  A girl named Gavin in Richmond, VA is suing the school board (represented by the ACLU, of course) for discrimination because the school board told her that she couldn't use the boys' bathroom.

To start, I am annoyed at the confusion of the gender pronouns in the article.  The article starts off with this paragraph:

A federal appeals court in Richmond has ruled that a transgender high school student who was born as a female can sue his school board on discrimination grounds because it banned him from the boys' bathroom.

The author uses 'his', 'him' and 'he' a combined total of 10 times in the article.  But, the author also states right out of the gate that Gavin was born a female and later in the article refers to Gavin being denied access to the boys' bathroom since it doesn't match Gavin's biological sex which admits that HER biological sex is and always was female.  Since when do our personal whims get to override biology?

Second, why is it that Gavin's self-identity is any more relevant that her classmate's identity of her?  Stated differently for clarity, Gavin self-identifies as a boy and likely has a classmate named Josh who is a boy, self-identifies as a boy, AND identifies Gavin as a girl.  So, concerning issues that affect them both, it is unfair to allow the identification of Gavin solely to rest on Gavin.  Shouldn't Josh have a say since he, too, is affected?  Now, the reality is that there are hundreds of students who use the boys' bathroom and likely all of them identify Gavin as a girl.  Why should Gavin's single identification get to override the hundreds of identification from others?  Why should they all be uncomfortable so that Gavin can be comfortable?

Third, if self-identification is now a thing and all people everywhere have to accept one's self-identification then where does it end?  Like Gavin ignores biology, can a 15-year-old ignore age and self-identify as a 21-year-old?  Must liquor stores then sell to him?  Can someone ignore profession?  Can a postal worker identify as a police officer and pull someone over and ticket them for a civil infraction?  Does the one receiving the ticket have to pay it?  Does the court system have to enforce it?  All because the postal worker's untrained and unauthorized self-identification?  Wouldn't that be impersonating an officer which is a crime?  If biology can be ignored, can physics?  Can a 300 lb man renew his driver's license and claim to be a trim 145?  Wouldn't law enforcement protest people misrepresenting themselves on their state identification cards?  How about those in prisons?  Many of them maintain their innocence.  If they self-identify as innocent, who are we to deny their freedom?

Fourth, it is a fact that people can have psychological issues.  We all know this.  So, if a girl thinks that she is a boy, the logical and reasonable response would be to believe that something is wrong with her psychologically.  Instead, misguided people would rather agree with her and believe that something is instead wrong with her body.  But, there is nothing wrong with Gavin's body.  She was beautifully created as a girl and should embrace it.  Unfortunately, she's grown up in a sick culture that would rather celebrate her "courage" to be something she isn't than encourage her to be a healthy version of herself.

Opponents to my position on the subject are moved to believe that there is a real and present discrimination here because she self-identifies as a boy, attempts to look like a boy, claims to be uncomfortable in using the girls' bathroom, and is being told she cannot use the boys' bathroom.  But, far fewer people would sympathize with Gavin (probably not the name she was given at birth, by the way) if her name were Gabriella and she looked like a girl.  If this Gabriella were to claim to self-identify as a boy and be making the same case that Gavin is now making, much less support would be present for Gabriella.  Why?  Because she looks like a girl.  But, what do looks have to do with it?  Hmm?  Now, I'm just stirring the pot.  See?  I don't like the idea of Gavin being alone in the bathroom with my teenage son.  It's inappropriate.  But, I'm strongly opposed to Gabriella being alone in the bathroom with my teenage son.  What's the difference?  You tell me.  The fact is that those who are claiming a discrimination to be present are unknowingly judging a book by its cover.  They support Gavin's quest (more likely the ACLU's quest using Gavin as a pawn) because of what she looks like, not necessarily because of what she truly believes about herself.  Because of her appearance, they don't question her intentions in trying to gain admittance to the boys' bathroom.  Gabriella, on the other hand, would likely be judged and labeled some sexually promiscuous name if she were attempting the same thing because her intentions would be automatically questioned.

The reason that these sorts of cases should be thrown out immediately is because of the simple reason that we don't get to decide as individuals what reality is and then force that reality on others.  There are things that are decided for you and you should accept and live with those things.  If you want to feel like a victim of your circumstances, you're welcome to do so.  But, you don't get to make victims of everyone else, because you'd rather accept a falsehood as your personal truth.

Perhaps, our attempt as a society to be civilized has created what some very confused people take to be a gray area when the rest of us just take its obviously intended meaning for granted.  But, a wise woman (my wife) suggested the most obvious fix to the issue:  Rather than have bathrooms labeled boys/girls, men/women, gentlemen/ladies, etc. perhaps we should just label them penises/vaginas.  That should clear up people's ridiculous confusion.

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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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Theistic Evolution

Theistic evolution: the acceptance of the theory of evolution as the mode for which God used to create the world.

I still remember when I first came up with theistic evolution.  No, I'm not pulling an Al Gore.  I didn't invent theistic evolution.  I didn't coin the phrase.  I didn't put pen to paper and get anything published in any scientific journals either.  I didn't do any of these things.

However, in 1998, I did formulate a version of theistic evolution in my mind.  I wasn't introduced the idea.  On the contrary, the only exposure I had to the teaching of life's origins fell into one of two contradictory categories, those that followed the Biblical account or those that were in alignment with evolutionary theory.  Like all Americans in my generation, I grew up being fed that the earth was old... very old.  So old, in fact, that no one could really agree on how old it was.  But, two things were for sure (according to the general consensus), [1] the earth was at least millions of years old and [2] that the earth predated humans by the majority of that time frame.

In the context of this cumulative acceptance of an ancient earth, it was no wonder why I unquestionably accepted so many things.  However, my story is not unique.  Like I suggested earlier, up to this point in my life, my beliefs on earth's origins were largely a product of my generation's public education.  That said, many should be able to relate to the story I have told thus far.

When I say that my beliefs could have been categorized as theistic evolution, I don't mean that I believed humans came from apes that came from monkeys that came from koalas ... (the "goo to you" evolution).  Having been raised in church, I knew the Bible well enough to believe that God created mankind special.  Not to mention, being a human, I have the personal experience of knowing that there is nothing remotely close to being human on earth.  But, despite this, I allowed for the possibility that perhaps every other living thing came about through some slow process, perhaps even by evolution.

But, in 1998, the culmination of all that I knew of earth's origin came to a head.  I was no longer satisfied carrying around two buckets of information that could not be reconciled.  My dissatisfaction led me to start reading, talking with others, and carrying on debates in my head.  It was like I poured out those two buckets of information in a boxing ring in my brain then sat back to watch what would happen, who would survive.

I expected a winner in this fight, but what I got was something else entirely.  I started to compromise.  In my reading of Genesis, I noticed that the word 'day' was being used before the earth was formed.  I felt that I stumbled on to a set of keys to a mansion.  I thought "If the earth wasn't formed yet, then there is no reason to think these so-called 'days' were 24 hour periods."  Thus, I accepted 'Day-Age Theory'.  I was excited.  Maybe my two buckets of incompatible beliefs were more compatible than I previously thought.  Armed with this theory, I was able to "prove" that the Bible allowed for millions of years during creation which, I believed, made all of what I had learned in school potential truth.

Fast forward a long time to the more recent history, I found that my Day-Age theory had some pretty obvious holes that I missed for years somehow.  Genesis wasn't written in real time.  It was written after creation was created.  So, the use of the word 'day' (along with all of the other words used in Genesis) was after the earth was created, not before, thus when the word 'day' was used it was referring to a 24 hour period.  There goes that theory.  The more I think about it, in fact, it was an awfully petty argument to begin with.  It was an excellent display of eisegesis (reading some preconceived idea into the text that isn't there) as opposed to a proper exegesis (examining the text for what it says plainly and by using context for meaning).

I'll cut to the chase.  I no longer believe that the earth is as old as I've been led to believe.  I believe that it's only thousands of years old.  Why do I believe this?  Here's a list that is in no way complete, in any particular order, or as detailed as I could make it.

• Assumptions of uniformity are prevalent throughout scientific community.
• Perhaps the biggest fault of the accepted sciences today is the gross assumption that everything has always been as it is now, that things have always decayed/formed at the same rate we see today.  It's an error of extrapolation.  For example, if one were to look at 10 minutes of my life to determine what my life looked like to date and what it will look like in the future one might determine that I have always sat in an office behind a computer and I always will.  Or maybe one would determine that I have always lived unconsciously in a bed and will continue to do so.  It just depends which ten minutes of my day they are watching.  Extrapolating is looking at a small portion of data and coming to a conclusion what the rest of the data must be.  Science makes the grave mistake of looking at the present and recorded recent history and assuming the past must be just like it.
• Dating methods are inconclusive and almost never agree with each other.

• If I have two battery testers and one says the battery is good and the other says it's bad, then at least one of my battery testers is wrong if not both.  They can both be wrong but they can't both be right.  If I have 40 battery testers of different types made from different companies that test using different methods, and 4 of them somewhat agree on a battery level while the other 36 are all over the scale.  I would more likely be correct to conclude that batteries cannot be tested than to conclude that the relatively close results of the 4 tested accurately.  Science's dating methods are so inaccurate and unreliable that they shouldn't be being used in any legitimate scientific study.
• Marine fossils are almost everywhere.

• If you look for fossils, you will likely find one in a very short amount of time.  I remember being excited about finding them as a small child.  I felt that I was well on my way to being some great archeologist every time I unearthed one.  I would keep the rock I found it in.  But, in no time at all my rock collection grew to a ridiculous size.  I realized that my finds were not out of the ordinary, but were rather commonplace.  My previously treasured finds found their way back into my yard and I gave up on my hopes of digging in the dirt for a living.  One place you can almost never find a marine fossil is in the ocean.  Hmm.  Why is that?  Scientists hypothesize that the earth is always shifting around trading ocean floor for dry land and repeating.  Remember Pangaea, the pre-continental drift super-continent?  Well, now it's being suggested that there have been many super-continents over the course of millions of years.  They think that perhaps the oceans and continents are like a deck of cards that are always just randomly being shuffled about ever so incredibly slowly.  The fact that marine fossils are found on dry land in sedimentary rock layers by the millions and typically not found in oceans at all is because these creatures were trapped on dry land and encased in sediments from receding waters.  They were not trapped by an ever so incredibly slow transition from ocean floor to dry land.  Which brings me to:
• Fossils don't form slowly.

• First off, realize that fossils are a freak of nature.  Why is it that we don't find fossils of squirrels and cardinals?  Because, bodies get eaten (by animals/birds) or decompose (eaten by the elements).  In order for a body to become a fossil it must be buried suddenly in a substance that disallows for or severely slows down the natural decomposition process while also replacing the slowly decaying body with an abundance of available minerals to replace all of the organic matter.  Science knows this which is why they don't talk about it too often, but when they do they start talking about tar pits.  Yes, good ol' tar pits.  Boy, if I had a nickel for every tar pit I've come across... well, I'd be without any nickels.  On the other hand, what event could have caused all the fossils that we find today?  A global flood.  Pick a local flood, almost any local flood, and take note of the amount of damage from both the water as well as the erosion of the receding waters.  Even a local flood of a few feet of water is catastrophic to a landscape.  If entire continents were flooded and the waters receded, we would see silt deposits so deep and laid so rapidly that all kinds of animals' bodies would be rapidly buried in air-tight silt that would aptly provide an environment in which those bodies could fossilize.  But, this means that all those bodies would have been from the same time frame.  Which brings me to:
• The Cambrian Explosion
• This is simply the explosion of evidence of all kinds of life.  The overwhelming evidence in the fossil record shows a huge sudden existence of life that leaves all kinds of scientists in debate over how evolution suddenly and rapidly took a huge leap.  What they don't debate is that maybe their entire preconceived gradual evolutionary model is unfounded to begin with.
• What does explain the sudden existence of life?  Genesis 1:20

These are just a few reasons for doubting the validity of the model given to us by our science classes, public television, and media outlets.  I started with these simply because some people are completely turned off by the response "because the Bible says so".  My point is that there are scores of models to attempt to demonstrate how the earth and life on it were formed.  But, I have found that they are riddled with holes that leave me asking more questions rather having any questions actually answered.  On the other hand, the Bible has been around for a long time and provides simple and accurate answers that make sense with the evidence (the world we see around us).

The truth of the matter is that I spent my entire life doubting the Word of God.  I learned as a small child that God created the world and everything in it in 6 days.  I, then, began to doubt this as I discovered that the popular opinion on the matter was that the world was far older.  I justified my doubt by assuming that the Bible's account was an analogy, a parable, and/or tainted by the men who wrote it.  My mistake was not following Proverbs 1:7, the first of the Proverbs.  I didn't fear God.  I feared men.  I was afraid what people would think of me.  I was afraid that they would think of me as stupid or gullible.  So, my knowledge began to be built on a shaky foundation of man's wisdom rather than the solid, unchanging, clear truth of God's Word.  It's not popular to say this.  People will call me biased and unable to accept scientific "truth" because I can't be "objective".  Well, I don't really care anymore.  No one has an objective opinion.  All opinions are subject to the other thoughts and experiences of the brain from which they come out.  So, if I'm going to be subjective about what I believe, I am going to be subject to God and my own God-given convictions.

This list are things that I thought of that I wanted to mention that didn't fall into the category that I was writing above.

• Nothing makes itself.  Everything that exists was made by something other than itself, outside itself. Therefore, it only stands to reason that nature was made supernaturally, outside nature.  It's circular reasoning that nature somehow came into existence adhering to the laws of nature that didn't yet exist.
• The existence of certain known truths are incompatible to an accidental, survival-of-the-fittest, common descent supposed reality.
• Absolute morality
• Laws of physics
• Apparent design
• Irreducible complexity in biology
• Parental "instinct" in virtually all species
• The Bible clearly and repeatedly gives God credit for having created everything physically.  Creating something is an action.  The Bible makes it clear that God actively created us ("forming us in the womb" Jer 1:5).  This goes against the idea that He merely created the rules and arbitrarily directed the process sort of second hand that led to you and me being "created".
• We all recognize design in things that are manufactured.  Upon seeing a strange car in their driveway when returning home, no one would suppose that the car could have resulted in accidentally coming together from the elements.  They see that it was designed and built and they wonder who is at their house because they rightly assert that it didn't drive itself there.  Even more simply stated, upon hiking through the woods, if you saw an 8 foot long 2x4 along the trail, you would be correct to assume that it was man-made.  You spot the evidence of design.  I mean, it's a piece of wood in the woods and you know without question that it was intelligently designed (or cut, in this example).  However, somehow, we fail to recognize the design in nature.  Since the discovery of DNA, we have more reason than ever to recognize the blueprints of design.  Yet, perhaps out of pure denial, many people refuse to believe that this is more than just pure chance that these blueprints came about.  I suppose that when a so-called expert invokes an unfathomable amount of time for any irrational process, the pill becomes a little easier to swallow.  With time and chance, they propose that anything is possible.  Perhaps one might even recognize that Time and Chance are being given the glory in place of Jesus.  In Matthew 19:26, Jesus says "... with God all things are possible."  See?  Jesus gives that glory to God the Father.  However, many in modern society are giving that to Time and Chance.  Seems like a candidate for idol worship, but perhaps that's just me.
  

Ultimately, it comes down to the fact that the Bible, God's Word, says that He created everything in 6 days.  Who am I to think that this obvious clarity is actually somehow more obscure than it looks?  God is truth.  The difficulty is that it wasn't until I allowed myself to become subject to God that I came across truth.  Now, to the rational unbeliever, this sounds out of turn.  This person says, "I won't believe until I am first convinced with evidence."  The trouble with Christianity is that God provided all the evidence we would ever need.

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.     - Romans 1:20 (NIV)

The issue is not that we need to be first convinced with the evidence of the existence of God (or in the theme of this blog, the reliability of His Word) in order to believe.  The issue is that we must first lay down our stubbornness, our fear of being wrong, and our fear of man (what people will think of me).  These are walls that we have built.  The good news is that there is a door in those walls.

Here I am! I stand at the door and knock.     - Revelation 3:20

Our problem is that we think God should fly in over our walls and serve us truth with tea and crumpets.  But, He already did that.  He came to this world as a man and gave us all the evidence we needed, even paid our debts while He was here.  All He asks is that we hear His voice at the door and open it.

Many people say that the age of the earth is simply trivial and does not and should not matter to the Christian.  However, the implications of an old earth does undermine God's telling of creation.  It even undermines the gospel.  Let me explain in as simple a way as possible.

• God created everything and saw that it was good. (Gen 1:31)
• God is perfect. (Deut 32:4)
• Man and animals were created vegetarian. (Gen 1:29-30)
• Death didn't exist until sin ushered in death (Gen 2:17, Rom 5:12)
• An animal was immediately sacrificed after the fall of man to make skins to cover their nakedness.  This was a picture of the need for animal sacrifice to cover sins.  But, animal sacrifice only covered sins as a temporary measure.  Jesus was the perfect infinite sacrifice that was required to reconcile sinful man with his sinless Creator.

If things lived and died long before Adam and Eve sinned, then sin didn't bring death.  If sin didn't bring death, then Jesus didn't have to die.  If death can't be beaten, then God isn't all-powerful.

On the flip-side, if death didn't exist before the fall, then all of creation existed with Adam and Eve.  Millions of years didn't separate man and dinosaur which explains the global phenomenon in every culture having dragon stories, carvings, drawings, and descriptions of all kinds.  It would mean that all accepted forms of dating methods are incorrect.  It would mean that the Continental Drift Theory had to have happened at a much greater pace than what has been previously proposed, which would have required some major catastrophic event to take place like... I don't know... a global flood, perhaps?

I realize that I'm kind of all over the place, but my point is quite simple.  I have found that the earth is not a day older than what the Bible says it is.  The Biblical account is logical, reasonable, and is backed up with evidence galore of all creation.  I know this might make me a "young earth creationist", but before you scorn too much just know that I'm in good company.  Jesus, too, shows His "young earth creationist" colors when he said what's written below.  Notice that he places the creation of man at "the beginning" and it's a clear reference to Genesis with the "made them male and female" part.

And He answered and said to them, “Have you not read that He who made^[a] them at the beginning ‘made them male and female     - Matthew 19:4

Can you try and explain away what Jesus was really saying here?  Yes.  But I would warn you that the very first recorded temptation to sin was just that: the questioning of what God really said.  Maybe that comes off very harshly.  I'm certainly not saying that Jesus was always plain about what He was saying.  And, I'm not trying to say that you're just as bad as the serpent in the garden if you study deeply the words of Jesus.  Far from it!  But, we should tread very lightly when doing so while constantly asking ourselves, "Am I trying to make it say something it doesn't plainly say?  If so, what is my motive?  Am I trying to bend it to fit my preconceived worldview?  What if it just meant what it says?  Would that cause me to have to rethink some things I've already thought I've come to understand?  To which am I giving more weight, what I think I understand or what He said?"

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Issue of Equality?

Last Tuesday, I was listening to the "Bible Answer Man" radio show on Bott Radio Network.  This is a live broadcast that welcomes people to call in and get a chance to ask whatever question they like.  The show's host, Hank Hanegraaff, then does his best to answer that question from what he sees as a biblical perspective.  I found that I like the show despite the fact that I don't always agree with his answers.  I guess I just like interacting in conversations about things that matter to people and how they relate to the Bible.  Granted, the conversation is taking place without my ability to interact.  But, being a fly on the wall is apparently alright with me since I continue to tune in.

I downloaded the mp3 from the show last Tuesday and trimmed it down to the one caller's two-part question along with Hank's responses.  I have included that at the bottom of this blog entry in case you would like to hear it for yourself.

The question essentially went like this:  Since we are equally granted the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, shouldn't same-sex couples be equally granted the same rights and benefits as heterosexual married couples but in the form of civil unions?

This question came from a Christian who thinks that it is "inequality" to give benefits to married people yet deny those same benefits to same-sex couples.  The more common argument is that they want same-sex couples to be granted the right to get legally married thus providing them with the same benefits.  Though, in listening to their arguments, most are not so concerned with the benefits.  They just use them as a point to argue about, but really they're looking to be treated as equals by the law.  This is a tough one to argue simply because, like the photo depicts, one who disagrees with the misguided movement is quickly labeled as a bigot, a hatemonger, a racist (quite the stretch there), intolerant, unloving, etc.

I thought, at first, that Hank was going to answer this question as I would have answered this question but he didn't.  He dived straight into the arguments against redefining marriage.  Which is fine, but I feel that he missed the opportunity to confront the underlying assumption that the question is posing.  The question is assuming that there is a lack of equal rights between a heterosexual man/woman and a man/woman who self-identifies as a homosexual.  The assertion being made is that heterosexuals enjoy a right to marry and the rights to the benefits that go along with that while those who claim to be homosexual are denied those rights.  However, this assumption is simply not true.

The fact is that all adults have the equal right to marry whomever they choose as long as they meet the criteria required to be a lawful marriage.  We all have the same criteria to that right.  Therefore we all have equal rights.  There are certain criteria that need to be met in order to receive a marriage license.  Just off the top of my head, here are some of those criteria:

• There must be two applicants applying for the marriage.  (You can't marry yourself, or your imaginary friend.)
• Both applicants must be humans.  (No explanation necessary.)
• Both applicants must be alive.  (No marrying dead bodies.)
• Both applicants must be present.  (No absentee ballot marriages.)
• Both applicants must be adults.  (I believe that some states will allow minors of a certain age to marry with parental consent, though I don't personally believe this is a good practice.)
• Both applicants must consent to the marriage.  (No forcing marriage on someone.)
• Both applicants must be of sound mind.  (No forcing marriage on someone who may not willfully choose it if they had the ability to properly communicate their wishes.)
• Both applicants must not be immediately related.  (No one seems to be debating this despite the fact that pretty much all of the same arguments being made for the allowance of same-sex marriage also apply to this category.  Right?)
• The two applicants must consist of a man and a woman.  (This gets into the popular "redefinition of marriage" debate.)
• The two applicants must not already be married to another person.  (The polygamy argument.  Not too many debating this one either, albeit with the spotty success of same-sex marriage legalization, more polygamists are coming out of the woodwork looking to piggyback with the same set of arguments and the watered-down legal definition of marriage.)

Since we all have the same rights that have the same restrictions we do have equal rights.  Where the argument takes the turn is when someone makes the statement that they can't legally marry who they love.  What is happening here is two things: 1.  They are trying to say that marriage is the legal recognition of those that love each other.  But, even Tina Turner points out the problem here with her hit song "What's Love Got To Do With It?"  As demonstrated in the list of criteria above, the government doesn't require nor recognize love.  And, we don't want them to.  2. They are trying to shift the equality from people to actions.  But, equality doesn't translate to actions.  Actions are not equal unless they are the same action, which in the example cited (the love between a same-sex couple versus the love between an opposite-sex couple) is not at all the same action.  One can't compare one love to another regardless of "sexual orientation".  But, that is another argument all together.  Hank went straight to this argument when trying to answer the question.  And, I can see why.  He knew that this is where it was going.

Where my answer would've differed is that I would have started with the refutation of the assumption of the question that implied that there is a lack of equal rights happening here.  I did this in the paragraphs above.  Then, to refute that civil unions should be allowed to offer the same benefits to same-sex couples, I would've simply stated that the benefits given to opposite-sex marriages are given because it's the only union that can possibly produce our nation's greatest asset: children.  Same-sex unions can not do this.  The argument goes like this in its purest form:

1. By nature and design, 100% of children are produced by one man and one woman.
2. Only male/female relationships can provide a mother and father to a child — the intuitive ideal supported by countless studies.

Same-sex unions cannot produce children nor can they ever produce the ideal household in which to raise other children.  Without the production of children, our nation will not survive.  And, without the production of ideal child-rearing environments, our nation will fail to produce successful future generations.  It is in the best interests of our government and the advancement of our culture to encourage opposite-sex marriages through whatever means within our power.  Therefore, the government has no business offering same-sex unions the same benefits since their unions are not nor will they ever be equally beneficial to society as opposite-sex marriages have always been.

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Gender Confusion

Yes, evidently, there are people that believe it's not only possible to be confused about one's own gender but also believe that one IS actually the gender one believes themselves to be regardless of one's physical characteristics.

In Queensland, a nine-year-old boy who was named Ronan Hayes at birth has since had his name changed by his parents to Emma Hayes.  According to the family, the boy at the age of four said that he wanted to cut off his penis and be a girl.  I would have thought this to be the point where the parent(s) explain to the little boy that removing a boy's penis doesn't make that boy a girl, but rather just makes a boy that's unfortunately missing a penis.  See?  I'm a male not just because I have a penis, but because every cell in my body is a male cell.  Remember the whole XX/XY chromosome thing we all learned in school?  We're either a male or female through and through not just in a particular physical area.

Did Ronan's parents teach Ronan that he'd only be a disfigured boy after his malpractice of a self-surgery?  No.  Instead, they allowed the boy to act like and be referred to as a girl at home.  He was enrolled in school as a boy and was being treated like a girl at home, living an essential double-life.  Until this year, that is, when the parents decided to re-enroll him in school as a girl named Emma.  The misguided and incredibly selfish parents demanded that the school treat the boy like a girl in every way including the use of the girl's bathrooms.  As a compromise, the school decided to allow the boy to use the handicapped bathroom and renamed it the "unisex" bathroom.  Was that good enough?  Of course not.  No, these parents wanted every (actual) female student's privacy violated so that "Emma" could feel like a real girl.

Another blog, Eternity Matters,  stated the following that I feel sums it all up very well:

Something I don’t understand: If your body actually is male and your mind says it is female, why do we assume that means there is something wrong with the body instead of something wrong with the mind?

If you have an emotional problem with your body’s gender, it seems like common sense that we need to address the emotions which contradict reality instead of the gender which is perfectly fine.

I'm reminded of that old encouraging saying "You can be whatever you set your mind to be."  Of course, all sane people know that this was never meant to apply to gender.  Or ethnicity.  Or species.  Just think how stupid that is.  I feel I'm a dandelion and want to live my life as one from now on.  Do not refer to me as a man lest you discriminate against me.

Or, how about celebrity identity?  I believe that I am Brad Pitt.  I demand access to my bank accounts right now lest you discriminate against me.

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