Global Warming, Yay or Nay? Or Something Else?

It seems that there are two major camps on the subject of global warming (at least in the social circles in which I find myself):

1. Those that believe the earth is heating up slowly, humanity's actions are its cause, and immediate environmental action needs taken to reverse current effects.
2. Those that deny that the earth is heating up and thus don't feel that action needs taken to control things that aren't negatively affecting anything.

I never really knew what to believe.  I was never too concerned about it.  I grew up being taught all about the greenhouse effect and thinking that the use of Aqua Net and the popular 80's hairstyles that required it was mostly to blame for us dying someday in the future from solar radiation.  I have recycled most of my life, I love reusing and repurposing things, and have even made a career in remanufacturing so, in comparison to the average American, I'm very environmentally conscious and have a comparably small carbon footprint.

Unless you live under a rock, you've been told through television, newspapers, magazines, coworkers, friends, etc. about how the earth is getting hotter.  In January, the New York Times published the article, 2015 Was The Hottest Year in Historical Record, Scientists Say.  And, I have little doubt that the information that they reference is correct.  Glacier depletion is commonly referred to as stone-cold proof of global warming (sorry for the pun).  Glacier depletion has been well documented over the course of the last 100 years or so with the availability of photography and is pretty much undeniable.  Anytime the media reports on someone or some group who speaks about global warming not being the issue that it's all chalked up to be, they are generally referred to in negative terms and called things like "global warming deniers" and often compared to "flat-earthers."

It's clear that the media has made up its mind on the subject and that they are whole-heartedly supporting camp #1 defined above.  But, if you look to the Internet, you'll quickly find conflicting information about how news media outlets report on climate issues.  Wikipedia has a nice little section on Media Coverage of Climate Change that upon finishing leaves the reader with the conclusion that news media is a very poor source for information concerning the science of climate change.  Scientists believe that news media is ill-informed, ignorant of the science, and too intent on writing and filming pieces that purposefully cause division and confusion and then capitalizes on it.  It's the discourse, not the truth, that the media is interested in maintaining to help sell their product.  To hear it from the scientific community, there is an overwhelming consensus that the earth is indeed warming up.  But, as you may read in previous blogs of mine, Shaky Foundations, for example, I don't fully trust the scientific community's opinion since so much of their foundational beliefs are unwise and illogical.

So, what do I believe?  Do I have to believe something?  Do I have to pick one of these two camps?  Can I just go on being unconcerned about it?  If not, where does one find the truth so that one can know for sure that they aren't going to become part of the problem?

One place I admittedly never looked for truth about global warming was the Bible.  I imagine that I'm nowhere near alone, though.  Even being a Christian, why would I look to the Bible for information about a modern problem?  I mean, it is a modern problem, right?

Well, maybe that's our collective problem.  Perhaps, we have an incorrect understanding of history and therefore do not know how to interpret what we see in the present.  A few years back, I was presented with some information.  Upon first hearing it I regarded it as craziness.  As the explanation continued, I began to understand it as an alternate theory.  But, by the presentation's end, I was intellectually rocked by it.  What followed was a fury of research that would later confirm it for me and finally bring acceptance as truth.  Now, I would like to present this to you.

Suppose for the sake of this presentation that the Bible is actually true.  This means that the whole world was under water at some point around 4,300 years ago.  If that were true, what would we expect to see?

• Evidence of sea life found in high mountain ranges
• Flood legends found distorted in virtually every culture
• A lot of available water on earth (3/4 of the earth is covered in water)
• Billions of dead creatures encased in sediment (fossils)
• Bent (not broken) sedimentary rock layers
• Examples of massive erosion caused by more water than what is currently available
• Huge layers of coal (dead vegetation) found miles deep in the earth's crust
• etc. etc.

Here's what I propose to be the true and biblical earth's history concerning global warming:

• Genesis 1:9-10 "Then God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear”; and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering together of the waters He called Seas. And God saw that it was good."
• All the waters were in "one place" and land appeared as one super continent. (Secular science believes this, too, and named this super continent Pangaea.)
• Genesis 7:11 "In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened."
• The continental plates were broken apart which caused molten rock (lava) to pour out into the seas and literally boil the oceans causing great "fountains" of steam that fell back to earth in the form of rain from the "windows of heaven".
• Evidence of this ocean boiling can be found in the presence of diatomaceous earth, which is fossilized diatoms.  "The worldwide association of diatomite deposits and volcanic deposits suggests that the availability of silica from volcanic ash may be necessary for thick diatomite deposits." - Cummins, Arthur B., Diatomite, in Industrial Minerals and Rocks, 3rd ed. 1960, American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers, pp. 303–319
• Genesis 7:12 "And the rain was on the earth forty days and forty nights."
• The continents, while submerged under water, sprinted apart over the course of less than 40 days unleashing billions of tons of lava into the ocean creating a new sea floor while sending plumes of steam into the atmosphere that fell back as rain since the atmosphere was much too saturated to hold it.  At some point under 40 days, the continental plates came to settle roughly at their current locations, the steam relented, and the rain ceased after 40 days and 40 nights.
•  Genesis 7:19 "(the waters) rose greatly on the earth, and all the high mountains under the entire heavens were covered."
• This was not a local flood nor was it merely symbolism.  It was a global flood that covered the whole earth, even the mountains.
• Genesis 7:20 "The waters rose and covered the mountains to a depth of more than fifteen cubits."
• Even the tips of the mountains were around 23 feet under water.

Now, consider this.  Glaciers are large bodies of ice formed by snow collection that are moving from a high point to a lower point.  A glacier's formation requires lots of snow.  Now, let's continue my proposed true and bible-based earth's history presentation:

• After the water receded, it wasn't just the surface of the planet that had drastically changed from the catastrophic events of volcanic activity, erosion, and continental sprint.  The climate had largely been affected.  The increased volcanic activity during and the years following the flood filled the upper atmosphere with ash and aerosols (fine particles) that reflected some of the sun's light resulting in a cooled atmosphere.  Also cooling the earth's atmosphere was the year that the entire earth was covered in water.  Water does not absorb the energy from the sun as efficiently as exposed ground does.  It's the absorbed energy in the ground that is released back out that helps keep the earth warm at night until more heat can be absorbed.  The global flood would have created a deficit of heat absorption every day the land was covered.
• Combine this cooled atmosphere with warmed oceans from all the oceanic lava introduction and you get lots of evaporation, condensation, and snow.  (It was likely that the heated oceans helped put off enough warmth to somewhat offset the deficit of the sun's energy absorption while the earth was completely covered with water.  But, warmed oceans and cooled atmosphere together would have created snow storms that the world never saw before nor experienced since.
• With the cooler summers, snow was not melted and thus it accumulated in large amounts in the mid to upper latitudes forming glaciers in a very short time period.
• We would recognize this period after the flood as the Ice Age.
• The volcanic activity settled down eventually, clearing the atmosphere of particles, and starting a familiar climate cycle similar to what we now see today.  The glaciers have been depleting ever since at a faster rate initially in the lower latitudes and slowing exponentially in the higher latitudes.
• With the return of the ice back into water, the oceans are rising ever so slowly.
• Temperatures are ever so slightly climbing as the atmosphere finds its equilibrium.

In conclusion, glacier depletion, global warming, and a rising ocean level isn't evidence of human interference with the world's climate so much as it is evidence of God's interference with and destruction of a sinful mankind.  It would be better to look at all these effects and recognize them for what they are:  a standing geological reminder that God is sovereign.  Romans 1:20 states "For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse."  Even when He destroyed the earth because of overwhelming sin, He did it in such a way that there would be evidence everywhere for us to see, know the truth, and seek Him like we are supposed to.  I will end this with 2 Peter 3.  It is incredibly applicable to this discussion!  In it, the Bible predicts that people will deny that the flood ever happened and believe instead in uniformitarianism ("everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation").  This is one of the foundational beliefs of secular science today.  Wow!  (I did the highlighting not so you wouldn't read the whole thing, please do, but so that you wouldn't miss the highly applicable points to this blog.)

1 Dear friends, this is now my second letter to you. I have written both of them as reminders to stimulate you to wholesome thinking. ² I want you to recall the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets and the command given by our Lord and Savior through your apostles.
³ Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. ⁴ They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.” ⁵ But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water. ⁶ By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. ⁷ By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of the ungodly.
⁸ But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. ⁹ The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
¹⁰ But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.
¹¹ Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives ¹² as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. ¹³ But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.
¹⁴ So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him. ¹⁵ Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. ¹⁶ He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.
¹⁷ Therefore, dear friends, since you have been forewarned, be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of the lawless and fall from your secure position. ¹⁸ But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen.

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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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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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Christmas (A Celebration of the Creator)

It floors me that I grew up in church, here in the "Bible Belt" even, and somehow never put it together that Jesus was around for Creation Week.  Perhaps, I was just a bad listener back in the days of Bible School?  I'm not sure.  At any rate, I've come to realize the truth of Colossians 1:16.

For by Him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through Him and for Him.

With Christmas only days away, I thought it only appropriate to have a Christ-centered blog to write.  I think that most of my confusion on the eternal Jesus started with my understanding of Christmas being the birth of Jesus.  Naturally, I treated His birth as being His beginning.  But, scripture shows that this was not so.  John 1:1 puts it this way.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God

So, Jesus created the earth and everything in it.  The Holy Trinity is definitely a little difficult for us to understand at times.  This verse says three things:

1. Jesus was in the beginning already.
2. Jesus was with God.  (in other words: distinct from, yet connected to)
3. Jesus is God.

This blows our little finite minds.  But, this is a pillar of Christian (and Biblical) theology.  The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all the same God yet distinct from one another.  1+1+1=1 in this case.

Recently, I saw this article on Google News.  There's been a lot of speculation about life on Mars in the scientific community and all sorts of things are being tossed around as possibilities.  This article tried to summarize what the scientists all agree upon.  I don't know if you can make out the text in the photo but is says this:

For lifeless chemical compounds to organize themselves into something alive, scientists generally agree, three sets of things must be present.

■ Standing water and an energy source.

■ Five basic elements: carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, phosphorus and nitrogen.

■ And time, lots of time.

I would like to point out that which has been pointed out by many already and yet is still not very well known.  Invoking "lots of time" as a supposed catalyst for creating life is transferring Creation from God to a mindless randomness.  It is, in essence, creating a new god.  Because, to believe time and chance created all we know, is done so with faith, faith in time and chance.  It robs the true and only God of Creation of the glory that only He deserves.

What I find ridiculous is that anyone with any amount of education could so easily fall for the illusion that time is a solution to bettering one's chances. 

A simplified model can make the somewhat difficult model easier to understand, so I'll give you a simple one.  Suppose there are three overturned cups like in the photo to the right and I put a coin under one of them.  I ask you to choose one.  Obviously, you have a 1 in 3 chance in choosing the one with the coin.  Suppose you got it wrong.  Then, without changing anything, I ask you to choose again.  Now, your chances have become better because, as an intelligent being, you won't pick the same cup you did previously.  Thus, you will have increased your chances of choosing the cup hiding the coin to 1 in 2.

Notice that this model has a requirement of an intelligence being present in order to have an increase in the odds of success.  If the exact same scenario ensued, but I made you turn around while I rearranged the cups after you initially got it wrong, then your odds would remain 1 in 3 regardless of how many times we repeated the exercise.

Now, with 1 in 3 odds, it is likely that sooner or later you'll pick the correct one.  But, that doesn't transfer to impossible odds.  This is where people get confused.  If your chances are 1 in a million, and those chances never get any better, it's a very safe bet that you'll never get it right regardless of the amount of time you dedicate to trying.

Scientists that propose time does in fact help the chances of life creating itself, have to first propose that there is a chance that it could happen in the first place.  In 1953, the Miller-Urey experiment attempted to prove the possibility and they failed.  With all the advances we've made since then, it's still not ever been shown that life could be created by time and chance.  Yet, articles like this one show that somehow, despite all knowledge and logic, the scientific community still insists that it is a possibility.  Why?  Because, all of their models are based on the assumption that it is.  And, wouldn't that turn out to be a foolish waste of resources?

The author of the article makes it known that "scientists generally agree" that "time, lots of time" can replace intelligence in the equation.  Furthermore, all involved assume that water, an energy source, and a list of some basic elements all happened to exist in a suitable environment just to start this impossible scenario.  They don't even bother to try to explain where the elements originated, how they were organized or why they adhere to natural laws of molecular structure.  For that matter, where did the laws of nature originate?  Can laws of physics organize themselves?

Attempting to create origin models without God the Creator only leaves one having to build models on assumptions that defy all known logic.  Make no mistake.  God the Father created all things through Jesus Christ.  So, this Christmas, celebrate Jesus who not only was born in a manger, not only died on a cross, not only substituted himself for all of our shortcomings so that we could be reconciled to the Father, but also created you, the earth, and everything in it.

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