WHY I'M EVOLUTION FREE
111Answers for Darwin Followers
by Elbert Hardy
111Answers for Darwin Followers
by Elbert Hardy
Questions with Answers 26 thru 50
26. Q. Do evolutionists try to get rid of God and thus get rid of their guilt?
A. If mental gymnastics is all it takes to get rid of the guilt, just pretend there is no God and he’s gone and so is the guilt. But, if you are honest with yourself, you know this doesn’t really work. Evolutionists are all in denial of an important reality. One day, they will find out for sure there is indeed a God and that he is a Force to be reckoned with.
All religions, including evolution (where their god is nothing), exist to absolve man from guilt. All of them created a god or gods in their own image. They made the gods they worship. They are all fake and in my opinion detrimental to human advancement. But before you get mad at me for saying this, let me say that true Christianity is not a religion at all, though a large body calling themselves ‘the church’ claims it is THE religion.
Religion is men seeking God. True Christianity is God seeking men. He’s the one choosing a people out of all kindreds and tongues for his name to build for himself a peculiar people ready for his Kingdom.
People may believe in their version of God by the millions, but that does not make their image into the real God. Where’s the truth? Where’s the proof? Let’s find it, pursue it and retain nothing but. The only real way to get rid of guilt is to run to God, not from him.
You are involved in the quest to find the one and only True God, or you would not be accessing this material. We should all prove to our own satisfaction that God really does indeed exist. We should be able to find millions of tons of on-the-ground evidence for his existence and that the Bible, as his divinely inspired word, is indeed the word of God. For example: in Genesis 19 we find where God overthrew the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes along with Bela, Admah and Zeboim (cities of the plain).
According to the biblical account, God rained fire and brimstone on the cities and no one escaped alive. You can still find golf ball-sized pieces of brimstone, embedded in the layers of ash, that will actually burn, even after lying there dormant for more than 3,000 years. The sulfur content is white instead of the normal earth-typical yellow and is more than 99% pure, unlike the earth-typical type which is only about 70% pure sulfur.
By traveling to the State of Israel along the western shore of the Dead Sea, we can find the remains of these burn-out cities. Now, we can see videos taken by those fortunate enough to go there and video what they experienced. How many millions of tons of ash would it take for you to believe God is real and his word is true? YouTube ® has many such videos. May I suggest you view them and believe what you see or go there yourself and bring back physical evidence you will accept?
Instead of throwing the baby out with the bath water and giving up on God because of some real or imagined grievance against the church or some ‘Christian’, why not get rid of guilt the right way and just ask God to forgive you? Just go somewhere off by yourself and ask God in earnest to show up in your thoughts. He will reward you if you diligently seek him and not give up.
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’ ‘God’s treasure’
27. Q. Physical Laws demand a Lawgiver. True or False?
A. True. Evolution says nothing about physics or natural law. Gravity, inertia, centrifugal force, magnetism, electricity, radio, light, sound and other forces like the strong and weak nuclear forces… where did they come from? How do they operate and sustain themselves?
Another law says that lesser forces can only come from greater forces, so all physical laws must originate and perpetuate from a higher, greater force. These effects and powers demand a Lawgiver. That would be God.
In addition, no ‘big bang’ has the power to explode such an orderly, complicated, vast and precise universe into being. The whole idea is absurd.
The big bang model just doesn’t work, as many scientists have now come to see. Just Google® ‘How the Big Bang fell out of favor or go to Physics forums like http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=228943 and you will find no shortage of credible resources debunking the whole thing.
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘physical laws prove God’
28. Q. If the majority of scientists believe in evolution, doesn’t that make it the truth?
A. Trust no man. Why take man’s word over God’s? The Holy Bible states in Psalms 146:3-4 that we should not trust men: ‘3 Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. 4 His breath goes forth, he returns to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.’
Let’s say there are 10 billion people on the planet and 9.9 billion of them believe that the moon was made of Swiss cheese. Would you believe it just because the majority does? If you do, you may as well believe the world is flat. The Bible shows that people have known that the earth is round for thousands of years. (See Isaiah 40:22-24) The Bible’s science is accurate. Check it out for yourself. Read the book.
Men invented the theory of evolution. It is strictly imaginary and cannot be verified with any degree of certainty. So what makes it science? We can verify the Bible through historical documentation, on-the-ground-remains and spiritual revelation, all of which are denied or rejected by those still adhering to the faith of evolution.
There are several people like Herod and Pilate positioned in the specific times in history. You could travel to Saudi Arabia and find the real Mount Sinai (See YouTube Videos on this.) If you were a real Christian and in constant contact with Jesus through the Holy Spirit, you could know the spiritual advantages granted by the influence of the Holy Spirit. It’s a mind-to-mind experience… that ‘still small voice’ which guides, protects, delivers and strengthens.
Research ancient documents like the complete works of Josephus where you will find the historical figures mentioned in the Bible, particularly in Luke 2.
Various historical works are corroborated by even a cursory study of the Bible. Therefore, it is logical to trust its veracity. We all should be careful to do our own research and believe only what we can find revealed.
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘man or God’
29. Q. Is there truth in science? What is truth?
A. Classic words recorded in John 18:38 as being said by none other than Pontius Pilate as he interrogated Jesus at one of his pre-crucifixion trials. Truth is more than just what is true. It is a body of verifiable knowledge, wisdom and laws that govern life. Jesus said ‘Thy word is truth.’ in John 17:17. This clearly tells us Jesus believed in the ‘old testament’ as being the word of God and that it would always be valid. Truth is like that. It is good for all people at all times and in ever circumstance.
Many true Biblical statements have been confirmed by science. There is some truth in science, at least if your definition of truth is whatever is true. In fact, most of what science publishes is true because it is repeatable by experimentation.
This leaves evolution out in the cold with no clothes because it is not testable, repeatable or verifiable. But the real question is: Is what is true, what the Bible refers to as truth? Many statements are true that are not found in the Bible. And many true statements
It is also established by the Bible, such as the fact that the earth is round. (See Isaiah 40:22 for example: 21 Have you not known? have you not heard? has it not been told you from the beginning? have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? 22 It is he that sits upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretches out the heavens as a curtain, and spreads them out as a tent to dwell in:)
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘truth’ ‘science or bible’
30. Atheists seem to prefer death instead of life. Why not choose life? It beats the alternative by light-years.
A. Because men love darkness rather than light for their deeds are evil. This is a quote from the lips of none other than Jesus himself recorded in John 3:18 ‘He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.’
Evolution has nowhere to go. There is no future there; only death. Who wants to be dead forever? Life offers much, but death offers an eternity of nothing. Choose life! (See bible.cc/deuteronomy/30-19.htm or Google® Deuteronomy 30:19.)
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘atheists would rather die’
31. Only God can accurately foretell the future because only he can span the course of time. True or False?
A. True. In order to tell the end from the beginning, the one telling must have been there and be able to project into the future. Only God could do that. Men who claim to know the future are making educated guesses at best. But, we can know with certainty that the word of God does accurately foretell future events. Why? It has never failed yet.
Even today, you can see the beginning of the fulfillment a of prophecy in Revelation 16:12 where it talks about the Euphrates river drying up: Revelation 16:12 And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared.
Just go to YouTube® and you will see a stunning video by jimbonumber9 showing it happening. The word of God means business. He’s not kidding or playing around. You and I better pay attention. It’s for our greater good. He means life and a future for us, if we will only accept it and stop resisting him.
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘Euphrates drying up’
32. Q. Doesn’t Life require a Life giver?
A. Yes, life cannot make itself and humans cannot create it by fiat. So, it is logical to conclude there must be a Life giver. Can you make even the ‘simplest’ life form? Even if we were given all the raw materials, the electrical energy and the know how to build the body plan, we are still light years away from being able to create life.
It is beyond us. Face it. Life comes only from pre-existing life greater than the new life. That’s the way the world works. The best dissertation on this subject that I have found on the Internet is:
www.garnertedarmstrong.org under ‘Here Is Why Many Deny GOD Exists’.
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘Lifegiver’
33. Q. God must be experienced over time, to be fully appreciated. True or False?
A. True. From my own personal experience, I have learned how to listen for and hear God’s voice speaking into my mind words of life. Things always work out better for me when I listen and follow his voice, that is ‘obey’. Yes, I used the un-politically correct term ‘OBEY’! People do not like that word. They do not want to obey. They want to be free from having to obey anybody.
Why? Because they want their own way and will refuse to obey. No wonder their lives go bad and they end up paying for it on a bed of pain. They bring it on themselves through the freedom their own choice. Some freedoms are NOT in our own best interests. That is a hard lesson to learn these days. Almost no one is teaching it.
God must be experience over time. If you seek him diligently with all your heart over time, he will find you and come to you and live in you. It’s what is best for you and me. We should all learn to grasp and embrace his love immediately, instead of resisting it. It’s for our own good. He cares about you and me. Why avoid what is best for our lives and our futures?
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘God must be experienced’
34. Why do some orbs spin backwards, even in the same solar system, namely Venus, Mercury and Pluto? And some spin sideways… why?
A. The ‘big bang’ is really a ‘big bust’ scientifically. First of all the vast distances of space discovered and photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope evade all reasoning of the whole universe being compressed into a dot the size of a period at the end of a sentence. The very idea is embarrassing. Yet, it is still promulgated by the best ‘thinkers’ of our time.
Then, somehow, the dot exploded into all we see in the universe today. Poppycock! To teach this to our children is sheer propaganda and our kids should learn to be critical of this skepticism. Instead, they are graded on how well they absorb this baloney. When will we learn to let go of the myths of our day and accept the truth that there really IS a powerful God our Creator?
And have you ever seen an explosion result in order, beauty and harmony? Of course not! Explosions are only pretty to the ones selling dynamite. Everyone else knows they just make a big chaotic mess of things.
The limitless, beautiful and orderly universe did not come into being in a ‘big bang. No these things come only by and through design. Each orb you see out there is there by design. God made them and he knows each one by the name he gave it.
Here’s what the Bible shows: Psalms 147:2 The LORD doth build up Jerusalem: he gathers together the outcasts of Israel. 3 He heals the broken in heart, and binds up their wounds. 4 He tells the number of the stars; he calls them all by their names. 5 Great is our Lord, and of great power: his understanding is infinite.
6 The LORD lifts up the meek: he casts the wicked down to the ground.
21 Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? 22 It is he that sits upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretches out the heavens as a curtain, and spreads them out as a tent to dwell in: 23 that brings the princes to nothing; he makes the judges of the earth as vanity.
24 Yea, they shall not be planted; yea, they shall not be sown: yea, their stock shall not take root in the earth: and he shall also blow upon them, and they shall wither, and the whirlwind shall take them away as stubble. 25 To whom then will you compare me, or shall I be equal? Says the Holy One. 26 Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who has created these things, that brings out their host by number: he calls them all by names by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; not one fails.
And since there is order, beauty and harmony and these come only by design, then there has to be a Designer, Builder and Sustainer of the entire universe. We may as well get used to it. Real Science supports design and it’s Designer.
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘universe designed’ ‘planets spin backwards’
35. If evolution is real and it requires millions of year for life to ‘develop’, why do all life forms come fully developed?
A. They come fully developed because they could not live nor sustain themselves or their kind any other way. They all would have died long before they could ‘develop’. Think about what would happen if the first human that ‘crawled out of the sea’ took more than seven minutes to sprout a pair of lungs. They’d be dead on the spot. No time to develop anything except rigor mortis.
They were made that way. Lungs were not gills before evolution completed them. Nothing half-evolved would have survived. It’s that simple. All life forms came into being in a flash, not over the course of ‘millions of years’. The world and the universe just do not work that way. Down deep, everyone knows this. If they refuse to acknowledge that, they are not being honest.
Though it’s really about lifestyle choices and not about the evidence, check the fossil record. There are NO transitional forms to be found anywhere on earth. There should be multiple millions of them! Where’s the evidence? Why would adults refuse to acknowledge the truth if they really wanted to find it? Reality suggests they really don’t want to find the truth, even though they claim that is ‘all they are after.
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘no transitional forms’
36. Where are all the ‘transitional forms’ Evolution predicts? They should be everywhere, yet there are none to be found anywhere. Why?
A. Because there are none. They won’t ever be found because they simply don’t exist. Rather all life forms came into existence suddenly
.
The idea of any life form coming into existence over the course of ‘millions of years is a mere fairy story. Get over it, because it will never be confirmed by actual science.
It’s just wishful thinking. Now there are unscrupulous people who manufacture very clever fakes. But, when thoroughly examined and tested by the scientific method, they are exposed for the fraud that should be recognized as a crime.
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘no time to ‘develop’ or ‘why no transitional life forms?’
37. Lesser intelligence comes from greater; not greater from lesser as Evolutionists would have us believe. Why?
A. An example is robotics. We humans cannot create a robot or a computer greater than ourselves. They will always be lesser in power, influence and importance. That’s a well known physical law. It’s just the way the universe works. It’s not science to say that intelligent life gradually arose from pond scum or love sick ameba. Every life form is beautiful in design, elegant in function and perfect in its own lifestyle and reproduction. But it cannot rise to a level of existence greater than it started out being.
Of course caterpillars do become butterflies and tadpoles do become frogs, but they do not become horses or pigs. Each life form is limited and constrained to stay what it’s genetic and molecular makeup demands. Limits are a fact of life. I must get used to the fact.
Additionally, each life form is a separate entity in and of itself, which means it cannot transform or morph into another type of creature. Evolution says this happens all the time, yet can offer no proof. We are supposed to buy into that hook, line and sinker without question because they say so? No. They are going to have an uphill battle convincing me without real repeatable proof. Otherwise it’s fantasy and certainly not science.
This can only be explained by the existence of a greater Creator.
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘lesser intelligence into greater?’
38. Why can’t evolutionary theory explain the presence of mind, emotions, memory, creativity, reason, thought, personality, speech, imagination, learning, intuition, teaching, senses or any part of the mind itself?
A. Because these are functions of the spirit and not of the flesh. It doesn’t just come by itself. It is not the result of chemicals self-assembling into a human being. It is given, bestowed or built-in. We do have the powers listed above and a lot more control over some than others in that we can choose what we feed our minds. We can choose to learn this or that and subsequently we can choose what to do with acquired knowledge.
These are real powers we all are born with. We can be careful or reckless, because we have been given the responsibility to choose for ourselves. The question is ‘How do I choose right from wrong?’ The answer lies in what spirit we allow. This also is a choice. We can follow the spirit of the world (people or society), our own human conscience or that of the deceiver.
I know it is not popular to believe in a Devil or Satan, but Jesus did. Anyone can be deceived if we aren’t careful. Evolutionary theory has no explanation for the mind, or anything outside the realm of imagination. This is to say that it has only the explanatory power as its proponent.
The question that comes to my mind as a follow-up question is ‘Why do all animals lack the comparative vastness of intellect human beings enjoy? If we all descended from ‘a common ancestor’, all animals should have minds at least comparable to ours, but they don’t even come close.
Evolution has no explanation for our minds and all their powers because evolution is imaginary. So what is the right answer to the question of the origin of the human mind? We certainly did not make ourselves. We were not dropped here from the ‘Mother Ship’. We are here and have our being because we were engendered by our Maker, Creator and Father who wants to give us all things, including permanent life. Evolution cannot compete with that.
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘origin of mind’
39. Pre-programmed animal instinct requires information installed at conception by a Programmer. Why? And how can evolution account for this?
A. Animals act and react according to built-in instinct and instinct is not re-programmable. This is to say for example, the nature of a horse cannot be re-programmed into that of a dog or a cat. Each animal type or body plan functions or acts and reacts according to its own life-design plan.
This requires tons of information. The information has a separate Source apart from the animal, since the animal did not create itself. It has to have had a brighter, more intelligent and powerful Programmer for it to exist at all. There is simply no other explanation. Why don’t evolutionists just admit this?
The answer is proponents of this fallacy called evolution won’t hear it because they might have to change their lifestyle and they refuse to let go of their sins. They like them and would rather die than switch. May we all be careful about this, for God may grant our request. Be careful what you ask for. You may not articulate this or speak to God defiantly, but it is by our choices and subsequent actions that we can express our rebellion towards him.
He is in the heavens. We are on the Earth. Therefore let us all choose carefully and wisely whom we believe and serve.
Evolution leaves us with no future beyond the here and now. God offers us real and permanent life, not just this temporary one. Is it wise to slap his hand away?
Evolution cannot account for mind, nor for instinct. Where did all the information come from? It had to come from a Source greater than its subsequent. That is the way the universe works. That is reality. Anything else is simply denial. It’s time we all dealt with this and accepted the truth.
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘instinct and evolution’
40. Micro life is as complicated as the universe yet is full of living machinery functioning a certain way in all cells in all body plans in all moments of life and in all parts of the world at all times. Why can’t evolution account for this?
A. Evolution hold-outs still revere Charles Darwin as if he were the ultimate authority on how life arose, yet he knew nothing about genetics or the design and function of the cell. In Darwin’s day, the finest microscopes made the cell look like an indeterminate blob of goo. No wonder he came up with the wordy nonsensical descriptions we find in the ‘Origin of the Species’ and ‘The Decent of Man’.
Sometimes I wonder if any modern-day evolutionists have even read any of it. They rarely, if ever, talk about its poor English, grammatical errors and extreme wordiness. It is an excruciating bore to get through. Apparently he was trying to snow us with his ability to put words on paper, regardless of the lack of meaning built-in to them. The more the words, the less the meaning. No writer of our day could or would write this way, lest he be laugh out of the editors’ office and run out of town on a rail.
(Read it for yourself when you need a good nights’ sleep.)
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘complexity of the cell’
41. Why can’t humans create life? Evolution says nothing was able to create life. But as intelligent as we are, we can’t do it? What’s wrong with this picture?
A. Have you ever wanted to create a living thing? I have. But I don’t have what it takes. Neither does anyone else. But we are so bright, so enlightened, so intelligent and creative. Reality check: we are also limited.
Though our creative prowess is powerful, strong, resourceful and imaginative, even God-like, we can’t do it. That is where the boundaries are set and there is nothing we can do to change that. Evolutionists have no explanation of this except to pretend that the real reason is that life takes millions of years to do.
Yet if that were so, every living creature would die long before they could self assemble or develop.
The whole idea of things evolving on their own requires a lot of ability to pretend. It is neurotic in that it is stupid behavior by non-stupid people. There is something wrong with their thinking and it is that they don’t like to retain God in their knowledge because their deeds are evil and they don’t relish the idea of being exposed. They get rid of their guilt by getting rid of the God that they think requires them to feel that guilt.
Again, may I refer you to Romans 1:19- Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God has showed it unto them. 20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: 21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, 23 And changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. 24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves: 25 who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.
26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: 27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet.
28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; 29 Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, 30 Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 31 Without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: 32 Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.
This is the most thorough, succinct indictment of the heinous ‘theory’ of evolution and its proponents that I can imagine. I didn’t have to write those words; God had them written by Paul the apostle. They speak the truth.
Bottom line? God has set certain limits beyond which we will never be able to exceed. People do not like to be so restricted. They do not like God because they want to be the one in full control. To me, it is better to let go of the reigns and leave the driving to the One who knows the way. That way I don’t have the heavy burden of carrying a heavy load I was never intended to have to bear. Now it’s gone and he is in charge of my life. I don’t want control anymore. My timing, my reasoning, my ideas STINK, by comparison! Father knows best; not me.
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘humans can’t create life’
42. Evolutionists still cling to the ‘Big Bang’ model as to the origin of the universe, however chaotic. Creationists don’t buy this. Why? Why doesn’t chaos result in order, as evolution proposes?
A. Because explosions do not create beauty, harmony, complexity, order, absolute laws, physics or life, even if the Big Bang explosion took billions of years. Have you ever seen an explosion make order or beauty? Have you ever seen an explosion take ‘billions of years? Why is the universe still expanding? Why do astronomers keep finding new galaxies at the rate of about one per week? I think they will someday discover that each and every planet, solar system and galaxy is an individual act of enormous creative genious and power.
I’m saying the ‘Big Bang’ is unproveable and it doesn’t have the explanatory power to answer the basic questions of the origin of the universe or life itself. To me, the whole idea is just silly and should be dismissed out of hand for lack of evidence.
Beauty comes from a great Mind, not from chaos. Harmony comes only from a Spirit of harmony. Complexity comes from an understanding Mind capable of building it. Order comes only from a Mind that can choose it. Absolute Laws come only from those able to enforce them and their governments. Physics come only from the One who can decide how things ought to be, do, act and react within his realm and who has the powers needed to make them happen and sustain them. Life comes only from pre-existing life and the only Being powerful enough to create, build, govern, maintain and sustain the life he creates.
Nothing comes from nothing. Nothing ever could.
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘big bang debunked’
43. Why do prophecies about the Christ and their precise fulfillment in him require a powerful God to bring it to pass?
A. Some scholars claim there are more than 300 Old Testament prophecies pointing to Jesus Christ. Get a copy of my eBook ‘The Jesus IQ Test’ to see the top 31 of these. Note: Some scholars intimate that there are more than 300 such prophecies referring to Jesus Christ. These 31 are the most reliable and verifiable ones I have found. But even so, the statistical likelihood of only 8 of them being fulfilled in one individual is 1 in 1017th , according to Peter Stoner in Science Speaks (Moody Press, 1963).
‘That would be 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000. In order to help us comprehend this staggering probability, Stoner illustrates it by supposing that "we take 1017 silver dollars and lay them on the face of Texas. They will cover all of the state two feet deep.
"Now mark one of these silver dollars and stir the whole mass thoroughly, all over the state. Blindfold a man and tell him that he can travel as far as he wishes, but he must pick up one silver dollar and say that this is the right one. What chance would he have of getting the right one? Just the same chance that the prophets would have had of writing these eight prophecies and having them all come true in any one man."’
(Quote taken from Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry. www.carm.org/prophecy-bible-and-jesus)
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘Christ prophecies proof’
44. Don’t evolutionists need a Savior?
A. Many if not all evolutionists believe that when they are dead they are dead and that is all there is to it. They will be buried and never be seen or heard from again. All that they were will be gone and forgotten forever. But as author and comedian Penn Jillette has said: ‘How much do you Christians have to hate people if there is any possibility of there being an afterlife and don’t at least try to tell someone?’ Even though he believes there is no God, he still believes Christians should proselytize. So do I.
Let’s face it, perilous times are here. It’s going to get a lot worse, according to Jesus in Matthew 24. Evolution seems clueless because it cannot predict the future and there is no guide book that can foretell what’s coming down the pike at them. We can’t find it in the Origin of Species or the Descent of Man, that’s for sure. What’s so scary, you might ask? Israel is on the west, Iran on the east and Iraq is in between. Iraq, according to the Brookings Institute, has more oil than Saudi Arabia.
The oil ocean buried in Iraq is less than 100 feet down. Its depth is virtually bottomless. When the war there goes nuclear, we’re all in jeopardy of survival. They’re going to nuke the oil fields in Iraq. An unwelcome lake of fire will thus explode on the world scene, causing darkness from the smoke, global superheating, and the end of weather. Earthquakes, huge hurricanes and tsunamis will be common. The icecaps, including most of Greenland, will melt, flooding away the islands of the earth.
This unquenchable fire, with the bottomless pit of oil for fuel, will compromise all life on earth, including yours and mine. What if daily temperature increased by only 1 degree per day? At that rate, after only 1 year, outside temps will be lethal at over 400 degrees F!
It’s wise to be afraid of things that potentially could kill you. Science can’t save us. Neither can governments, politicians, the medical and pharmaceutical industry, the military or industry.
That’s exactly why you and I, regardless of our beliefs, need a Savior. It’s a matter of survival of the nations and the entire planet itself. Only the Bible has told us about these things and given us the way out. His name is Jesus. He’s the Maker of the earth. He alone will know how to fix what we screw up. He’s the Master of molecules and has all the power to make things right again.
We need him for life. The big question is: How will you and yours survive without him? If only one out of ten are left alive at the return of Christ, which one in your family will it be? Jesus is called the ‘Savior of the world’ for a good reason. It’s not just a spiritual salvation. It’s quite literal and on-the-ground real. You can see it coming. Will you be ready? Everyone needs the Savior. Be smart and stay sharp. Get wisdom while it’s still available. Seek Jesus and find him. Go to a quiet private place with your Bible at hand and ask him to come and meet with you in your spirit. He promised that we would show up if you seek him diligently.
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘wise men still seek him’
45. Is evolution just another religion with nothing as god, no purpose for life and no future?
A. Religion is man’s attempt to absolve himself from guilt by fashioning a god that can release him from it. It is man seeking God. Evolution is a little bit different. It is man’s attempt to absolve himself from guilt by fashioning a story that removes any god that can make him feel guilty. It is man denying God.
Adherents to this fairy story are a god to themselves. They make up the rules as they go along as if they owned the place. Denial is wishful thinking and childish. Stupid behavior by non-stupid people is called neurosis. Evolutionists are not stupid people. In fact, they are some of the most brilliant and articulate minds on the planet.
Some of them are even more honest that certain religious people. But they deny what would bring them fully to life when they could have had it to the full. That doesn’t seem all that bright to me. It’s akin to someone trading a limitless fortune for a cigar box of trinkets. As to the purpose of life, in my opinion, the Christians win.
They get permanent life, unlimited frequent flier miles and no worries about what they might loose ever again. They get a permanent home that will never be taken away and a great job they dearly love with no possibility of layoffs, firings or cuts in pay. They get deep lasting relationships with those they love and cherish and plenty of time to enjoy one another’s company.
In addition they will have powers to get things done and to help others with no limits to their resources. They will inherit the earth as their headquarters planet and have a close personal relationship with its King. This future looks ever brighter, while the evolutionist has only the blackness and silence of permanent death to look forward to. Choose wisely.
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘evolution is a religion’
46. If computers, TV’s and other great inventions have creators, and they are not alive, how much more do living things require a Creator?
A. As bright as we humans are, we have definite limits. We cannot create life. If we, being intelligent can’t do it, how much less can nothing create it? It doesn’t have what it takes. This sounds like a simple answer, but reality suggests that complicated life, in any form, requires a higher intelligence than what is created.
Life is impossible without a Creator with all the math, science, physics, chemistry, architecture, etc. and all the unknowns of life mastered, in order for life to exist. Since life does exist, so must its Creator. Do you exist? Just pinch yourself and you will find out.
Are you really comforted by the idea that you did not have a Creator? If you had no Creator, how do you account for the extreme complexity of your own body? Have you ever studied anatomy? At the cellular level, just observing one of the different types of cells of which there are many in your body, you will have to admit there is order, perfect functionality and elegance in the cells design and build.
But, you don’t have to go to an electron microscope to grasp your body’s intricate complex and complicated structure. Just look at the systems that all function together. The largest organ in your body is the skin. It is generally waterproof, air-tight, flexible, intrusion resistant and elastic. It keeps the bad out and the good in, while helping to keep all the other systems and parts in their places. That’s one system.
Then let’s consider the muscular system. This is how we move, walk, lift, run, swim, etc. Blood vessels nourish the intricate network with energy-bearing food particles carried there by the blood itself. This leads us to the circulatory system without which we would immediately die. The circulatory system is a vast tubular network comprised of thousands of miles of blood carrying pathways, having their own sets of valves and other control points which help keep the blood flowing properly.
The blood is pumped by the heart to the lungs and throughout the body. Then there’s the Pulmonary, Endocrine, Skeletal, Nervous, Glandular and Organ systems. All of which work together to allow life for a typical 70+ year lifespan.
The closer we study anatomy, the more complexity we find. This is the opposite of the Darwinian evolutionary expectation. He apparently thought the closer we look the simpler it would appear, but this is not the case at all.
Bottom line? Complexity indicates more than design and planning aforethought. It requires the spark of life, the power to make it come into being and the power to sustain it with all the pre-requisites and pre-established earth parameters to keep it going over the few thousands of years men have walked the earth. Life requires a Life Giver.
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘life requires a Life-giver’
47. Evolutionists say life is so easy, so automatic, it just comes on its own, undirected, then why can’t they make it happen?
A. Millions of years, that’s why. They can’t replicate natural spontaneous genesis because of the time constraints. As mentioned above, humans don’t have what it takes. Life is not simple or easy and it never creates itself. We never observe it arising spontaneously. Why not? Because we don’t have enough time.
Seems to me if evolution was smart enough to bring life into being with its millions of years, it should have been able to provide permanent life instead of just a temporary one. But then, only God can do that, and all evolution believers will never acknowledge him.
All of life, every life form is interconnected and dependent on other life forms for its existence. No human will ever have the power to create anything alive. It is way beyond the bounds of human limitation. It’s a sheer waste of time to even try.
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘undirected life’ or ‘life in the test tube’ or ‘humans create life in the lab’
48. Is the God of the Bible, particularly the ‘Old Testament’ really ‘a cruel, malevolent, bully’? Does teaching kids about Hell as a place of eternal torment constitute child abuse?
A. Death of the first born of Egypt; the Flood; Joshua leading the Israelites to the Promised Land, exterminating men, women and children at the guiding hand of the Lord. At first blush it may appear that way but if he is God, he owns his Creation and can do with it whatever he pleases. So who are we to judge him?
Shall the pot say to the Potter: ‘What are you doing?’
He owns the entire universe and all that is in it. Consider the fact that, according to the Bible, God is a loving and good God who allows us free choice because he cares about us and wants us to learn character through our choices. As such free moral agents, we are free to create evil and hurt or kill other human beings. It is not he that is cruel, but we.
From the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science website comes this article: 'Religion’s Real Child Abuse', by Richard Dawkins, Sunday, May 14, 2006: ‘In the wake of the current scandal over child abuse by priests , I have had a letter from an American woman in her mid forties who was brought up Roman Catholic. She has two strong recollections from when she was seven. She was sexually abused by her parish priest in his car. And around the same time a little school friend of hers, who had tragically died, went to hell because she was a Protestant. Or so my correspondent was led to believe by the then official doctrine of her church. (emphasis mine throughout) Her view now is that, of these two examples of Roman Catholic child abuse, the one physical and the other mental, the second was by far the worst.
She writes:
"Being fondled by the priest simply left the impression (from the mind of a 7 year old) as 'yuchy' while the memory of my friend going to hell was one of cold, immeasurable fear. I never lost sleep because of the priest (?) but I spent many a night being terrified that the people I loved would go to Hell. It gave me nightmares."
I am sure her experience is far from unique. And what if we assume a less altruistic child, worried about her own eternity rather than a friend's? Odious as the physical abuse of children by priests undoubtedly is, I suspect that it may do them less lasting damage than the mental abuse of bringing them up Catholic in the first place.
Happily I was spared the misfortune of a Roman Catholic upbringing (Anglicanism is a significantly less noxious strain of the virus). Being fondled by the Latin master in the Squash Court was a disagreeable sensation for a nine-year-old, a mixture of embarrassment and skin-crawling revulsion, but it was certainly not in the same league as being led to believe that I, or someone I knew, might go to everlasting fire. As soon as I could wriggle off his knee, I ran to tell my friends and we had a good laugh, our fellowship enhanced by the shared experience of the same sad pedophile. I do not believe that I, or they, suffered lasting, or even temporary damage from this disagreeable physical abuse of power. Given the Latin Master's eventual suicide, maybe the damage was all on his side.
Of course I accept that his misdemeanors, although by today's standards enough to earn imprisonment followed by a life sentence of persecution by vigilantes, were mild compared to those committed by some priests now in the news. I am in no position to make light of the horrific experiences of their altar-boy victims. But reports of child abuse cover a multitude of sins, from mild fondling to violent buggery, and I am sure many of those cases now embarrassing the church fall at the mild end of the spectrum. Doubtless, too, some fall at the violent end, which is terrible but I would make two points about it.
First, just because some pedophile assaults are violent and painful, it doesn't mean that all are. A child too young to notice what is happening at the hands of a gentle pedophile will have no difficulty at all in noticing the pain inflicted by a violent one. Phrases like 'predatory monster' are not discriminating enough, and are framed in the light of adult hang-ups.
Second (and this is the point with which I began) the mental abuse constituted by an unsubstantiated threat of violence and terrible pain, if sincerely believed by the child, could easily be more damaging than the physical actuality of sexual abuse. An extreme threat of violence and pain is precisely what the doctrine of hell is. And there is no doubt at all that many children sincerely believe it, often continuing right through adulthood and old age until death finally releases them.
It will be said that the Catholic Church no longer preaches hell fire in its full horror. That depends on how up-market is your area and how progressive your priest. But eternal punishment certainly was the normal doctrine dished out to congregations, including terrified children, back in the time when many of the priests now facing expulsion or prosecution committed their physical abuses. Most of the victims bringing or supporting lawsuits are now in their middle years. They therefore, along with many others who were never physically abused, probably experienced mental terrorism of the hell fire type.
The long retrospect of the law entitles middle-aged victims to lucrative redress, decades after they suffered physically. Nobody thinks the physical injuries of sexual abuse could possibly last decades , so the damages now being claimed have to be the mental consequences of the original physical abuse. A typical claimant, now 54, said that his "life was marred by inexplicable confusions, anger, depression and lost faith." (Parenthetically, one can't help marveling at the idea of a life being marred by lost faith. Perhaps it would get the sympathy of a jury.) But the point is this. If you can sue for the long-term mental damage caused by physical child abuse, why should you not sue for the long-term mental damage caused by mental child abuse? Only a minority of priests abuse the bodies of the children in their care. But how many priests abuse their minds? Why aren't Catholics and ex-Catholics lining up to sue the church into the ground, for a lifetime of psychological damage?
I am not advocating this course of action. Much as I would like to see the Roman Catholic Church ruined, I hate opportunistically retrospective litigation even more. Lawyers, who grow fat by digging dirt on long-forgotten wrongs, and hounding their aged perpetrators, are no friends of mine. All I am doing is calling attention to an anomaly. By all means, let's kick a nasty institution when it is down, but there are better ways than litigation. And an obsessive concentration on sexual abuse by priests is in danger of blinding us to all their other forms of child abuse.
The threat of eternal hell is an extreme example of mental abuse, just as violent sodomy is an extreme example of physical abuse. Most physical abuse is milder, and so is most of the mental abuse inherent in a typical religious education. The priest who urged a 14-year-old altar boy to give him oral sex, "blessing it as a way to receive Holy Communion" wasn't only abusing the trust normally enjoyed by any teacher, youth leader or scoutmaster. He was cashing in on the years of religious brainwashing that the child had endured as a cradle Catholic. Holy Communion: nice one! But again, only an extreme example of what churches ? and also mosques and synagogues ? Do to child minds in their care, in the normal course of events.
'What shall we tell the children?' is a superb polemic on how religions abuse the minds of children, by the distinguished psychologist Nicholas Humphrey.
It was originally delivered as a lecture in aid of Amnesty International, and has now been reissued as a chapter of his book, The Mind Made Flesh, just published by Oxford University Press. It is also available on the worldwide web and I strongly recommend it.
Humphrey argues that, in the same way as Amnesty works tirelessly to free political prisoners the world over, we should work to free the children of the world from the religions which, with parental approval, damage minds too young to understand what is happening to them. He is right, and the same lesson should inform our discussions of the current pedophile brouhaha. Priestly groping of child bodies is disgusting. But it may be less harmful in the long run than priestly subversion of child minds.’
I am inclined to agree with Professor Dawkins on this one. To frighten innocent children with a misrepresentation of what scriptures teach is sin. So, what does the Bible tell us about hell? Is it a real place? Are there people burning there right now? Will people really burn there consciously in abject torture for all eternity? Does the Bible really support this?
I’m here to stand up and say: NO! The Bible does NOT support this foul and blasphemous doctrine. It doesn’t fit the compassionate loving model of God at all. Look, if hell as an ever-burning ever-conscious place of torment was real, Jesus, who got the sins of the whole world dumped on him in the crucifixion didn’t receive hell as the punishment, neither will we.
The ‘wages of sin is death.’ (Romans 6:23) It never says the wages are eternal life in the flames of hell. We must all be very careful of what we accuse God of. He is not a mean cruel ogre worse than Satan himself; yet people, who long to have power and control over others concoct these erroneous doctrines for their own benefit.
The doctrine of hell is unfortunately firmly entrenched in our culture today, but the younger generation is not so easily duped. They research. They study into things more, now that the internet is here. They want to know the truth.
May I suggest you look into this hell enigma until you are fully convinced you have the truth about hell? Look into the original Greek and Hebrew manuscripts.
Paul never mentions it, though he wrote over half of the New Testament. Jesus never spoke of it either, though sincere preachers across the land keep spouting the untruth that ‘Jesus spoke more about hell then he did about heaven’. It’s simply not true.
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘why Christians become atheists’ or ‘reasonable atheism?’
49. Why are the physical conditions seemingly fine tuned to accommodate mankind?
A. The physics of the earth are set up to accommodate mankind: 4 seasons; a 24 hour day so he has 12 hours to rest and 12 to work; soil, water and sunlight so he can have food and drink; just the right oxygen content in the air he breathes; the right temperature so he doesn’t get to hot or cold; sunlight to provide warmth, energy, wood, photosynthesis, vitamin D, etc. If God had not set it up, it could never have come by chance.
There are several other factors contributing to the benefit of mankind which I don’t have space to go into; such as the right size sun and moon, the right distances from these and the other planets in our solar system. The chances of all the factors coming into being on one planet are so tiny, they are less than zero, according to statistical data found in Lee Strobel’s ‘The Case For a Creator’, Frank Turek and Norman Geisler’s book ‘I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist’ and many other science laden books debunking evolution. I recommend careful and thoughtful consideration of these books for further study.
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘earth’s fine tuning’ or ‘Case for a Creator’
Links: www.crossexamined.org and www.LeeStrobel.com .
50. Evolution has no future; neither do its adherents who would rather die than accept Jesus. Is that what you call ‘Bright’?
A. Talk about painting oneself into a corner! Evolutionists have a dead end, literally. What makes it worse is they don’t care, seems to me. They would rather indulge themselves today even if it costs their tomorrow. Now does that seem bright to you? No, it is not bright to want only this life.
We come to life in a carbon-based body that can only live for a short time. Then we die. Atheists say that is all there is. There is no life after death. But what if they are wrong? Is there really a way to know for sure without dying to find out? According to Jesus, we can enter into life through faith in him.
Innately and naturally, we all ponder life and death. Why are we here? What is life about? Do I have meaning and significance? Where am I going? What is death? Is there life after death? What is the Purpose of Life? Questions like these are clearly beyond science to answer.
Atheists don’t care about eternal life. They supposedly ‘know’ it isn’t so. But what if it is real and you miss it? Would your life not have been little more than an exercise in futility? Is it smart or bright to not want to live forever? No, especially when the potential to do so is really there through belief in Jesus Christ. There is so much more to life than usually imagined. There is a great future to look forward to, as I will explain later.
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘purpose of life’ or ‘life’s meaning’.
A. If mental gymnastics is all it takes to get rid of the guilt, just pretend there is no God and he’s gone and so is the guilt. But, if you are honest with yourself, you know this doesn’t really work. Evolutionists are all in denial of an important reality. One day, they will find out for sure there is indeed a God and that he is a Force to be reckoned with.
All religions, including evolution (where their god is nothing), exist to absolve man from guilt. All of them created a god or gods in their own image. They made the gods they worship. They are all fake and in my opinion detrimental to human advancement. But before you get mad at me for saying this, let me say that true Christianity is not a religion at all, though a large body calling themselves ‘the church’ claims it is THE religion.
Religion is men seeking God. True Christianity is God seeking men. He’s the one choosing a people out of all kindreds and tongues for his name to build for himself a peculiar people ready for his Kingdom.
People may believe in their version of God by the millions, but that does not make their image into the real God. Where’s the truth? Where’s the proof? Let’s find it, pursue it and retain nothing but. The only real way to get rid of guilt is to run to God, not from him.
You are involved in the quest to find the one and only True God, or you would not be accessing this material. We should all prove to our own satisfaction that God really does indeed exist. We should be able to find millions of tons of on-the-ground evidence for his existence and that the Bible, as his divinely inspired word, is indeed the word of God. For example: in Genesis 19 we find where God overthrew the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by burning them to ashes along with Bela, Admah and Zeboim (cities of the plain).
According to the biblical account, God rained fire and brimstone on the cities and no one escaped alive. You can still find golf ball-sized pieces of brimstone, embedded in the layers of ash, that will actually burn, even after lying there dormant for more than 3,000 years. The sulfur content is white instead of the normal earth-typical yellow and is more than 99% pure, unlike the earth-typical type which is only about 70% pure sulfur.
By traveling to the State of Israel along the western shore of the Dead Sea, we can find the remains of these burn-out cities. Now, we can see videos taken by those fortunate enough to go there and video what they experienced. How many millions of tons of ash would it take for you to believe God is real and his word is true? YouTube ® has many such videos. May I suggest you view them and believe what you see or go there yourself and bring back physical evidence you will accept?
Instead of throwing the baby out with the bath water and giving up on God because of some real or imagined grievance against the church or some ‘Christian’, why not get rid of guilt the right way and just ask God to forgive you? Just go somewhere off by yourself and ask God in earnest to show up in your thoughts. He will reward you if you diligently seek him and not give up.
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘Sodom and Gomorrah’ ‘God’s treasure’
27. Q. Physical Laws demand a Lawgiver. True or False?
A. True. Evolution says nothing about physics or natural law. Gravity, inertia, centrifugal force, magnetism, electricity, radio, light, sound and other forces like the strong and weak nuclear forces… where did they come from? How do they operate and sustain themselves?
Another law says that lesser forces can only come from greater forces, so all physical laws must originate and perpetuate from a higher, greater force. These effects and powers demand a Lawgiver. That would be God.
In addition, no ‘big bang’ has the power to explode such an orderly, complicated, vast and precise universe into being. The whole idea is absurd.
The big bang model just doesn’t work, as many scientists have now come to see. Just Google® ‘How the Big Bang fell out of favor or go to Physics forums like http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=228943 and you will find no shortage of credible resources debunking the whole thing.
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘physical laws prove God’
28. Q. If the majority of scientists believe in evolution, doesn’t that make it the truth?
A. Trust no man. Why take man’s word over God’s? The Holy Bible states in Psalms 146:3-4 that we should not trust men: ‘3 Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. 4 His breath goes forth, he returns to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.’
Let’s say there are 10 billion people on the planet and 9.9 billion of them believe that the moon was made of Swiss cheese. Would you believe it just because the majority does? If you do, you may as well believe the world is flat. The Bible shows that people have known that the earth is round for thousands of years. (See Isaiah 40:22-24) The Bible’s science is accurate. Check it out for yourself. Read the book.
Men invented the theory of evolution. It is strictly imaginary and cannot be verified with any degree of certainty. So what makes it science? We can verify the Bible through historical documentation, on-the-ground-remains and spiritual revelation, all of which are denied or rejected by those still adhering to the faith of evolution.
There are several people like Herod and Pilate positioned in the specific times in history. You could travel to Saudi Arabia and find the real Mount Sinai (See YouTube Videos on this.) If you were a real Christian and in constant contact with Jesus through the Holy Spirit, you could know the spiritual advantages granted by the influence of the Holy Spirit. It’s a mind-to-mind experience… that ‘still small voice’ which guides, protects, delivers and strengthens.
Research ancient documents like the complete works of Josephus where you will find the historical figures mentioned in the Bible, particularly in Luke 2.
Various historical works are corroborated by even a cursory study of the Bible. Therefore, it is logical to trust its veracity. We all should be careful to do our own research and believe only what we can find revealed.
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘man or God’
29. Q. Is there truth in science? What is truth?
A. Classic words recorded in John 18:38 as being said by none other than Pontius Pilate as he interrogated Jesus at one of his pre-crucifixion trials. Truth is more than just what is true. It is a body of verifiable knowledge, wisdom and laws that govern life. Jesus said ‘Thy word is truth.’ in John 17:17. This clearly tells us Jesus believed in the ‘old testament’ as being the word of God and that it would always be valid. Truth is like that. It is good for all people at all times and in ever circumstance.
Many true Biblical statements have been confirmed by science. There is some truth in science, at least if your definition of truth is whatever is true. In fact, most of what science publishes is true because it is repeatable by experimentation.
This leaves evolution out in the cold with no clothes because it is not testable, repeatable or verifiable. But the real question is: Is what is true, what the Bible refers to as truth? Many statements are true that are not found in the Bible. And many true statements
It is also established by the Bible, such as the fact that the earth is round. (See Isaiah 40:22 for example: 21 Have you not known? have you not heard? has it not been told you from the beginning? have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? 22 It is he that sits upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretches out the heavens as a curtain, and spreads them out as a tent to dwell in:)
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘truth’ ‘science or bible’
30. Atheists seem to prefer death instead of life. Why not choose life? It beats the alternative by light-years.
A. Because men love darkness rather than light for their deeds are evil. This is a quote from the lips of none other than Jesus himself recorded in John 3:18 ‘He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.’
Evolution has nowhere to go. There is no future there; only death. Who wants to be dead forever? Life offers much, but death offers an eternity of nothing. Choose life! (See bible.cc/deuteronomy/30-19.htm or Google® Deuteronomy 30:19.)
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘atheists would rather die’
31. Only God can accurately foretell the future because only he can span the course of time. True or False?
A. True. In order to tell the end from the beginning, the one telling must have been there and be able to project into the future. Only God could do that. Men who claim to know the future are making educated guesses at best. But, we can know with certainty that the word of God does accurately foretell future events. Why? It has never failed yet.
Even today, you can see the beginning of the fulfillment a of prophecy in Revelation 16:12 where it talks about the Euphrates river drying up: Revelation 16:12 And the sixth angel poured out his vial upon the great river Euphrates; and the water thereof was dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared.
Just go to YouTube® and you will see a stunning video by jimbonumber9 showing it happening. The word of God means business. He’s not kidding or playing around. You and I better pay attention. It’s for our greater good. He means life and a future for us, if we will only accept it and stop resisting him.
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘Euphrates drying up’
32. Q. Doesn’t Life require a Life giver?
A. Yes, life cannot make itself and humans cannot create it by fiat. So, it is logical to conclude there must be a Life giver. Can you make even the ‘simplest’ life form? Even if we were given all the raw materials, the electrical energy and the know how to build the body plan, we are still light years away from being able to create life.
It is beyond us. Face it. Life comes only from pre-existing life greater than the new life. That’s the way the world works. The best dissertation on this subject that I have found on the Internet is:
www.garnertedarmstrong.org under ‘Here Is Why Many Deny GOD Exists’.
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘Lifegiver’
33. Q. God must be experienced over time, to be fully appreciated. True or False?
A. True. From my own personal experience, I have learned how to listen for and hear God’s voice speaking into my mind words of life. Things always work out better for me when I listen and follow his voice, that is ‘obey’. Yes, I used the un-politically correct term ‘OBEY’! People do not like that word. They do not want to obey. They want to be free from having to obey anybody.
Why? Because they want their own way and will refuse to obey. No wonder their lives go bad and they end up paying for it on a bed of pain. They bring it on themselves through the freedom their own choice. Some freedoms are NOT in our own best interests. That is a hard lesson to learn these days. Almost no one is teaching it.
God must be experience over time. If you seek him diligently with all your heart over time, he will find you and come to you and live in you. It’s what is best for you and me. We should all learn to grasp and embrace his love immediately, instead of resisting it. It’s for our own good. He cares about you and me. Why avoid what is best for our lives and our futures?
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘God must be experienced’
34. Why do some orbs spin backwards, even in the same solar system, namely Venus, Mercury and Pluto? And some spin sideways… why?
A. The ‘big bang’ is really a ‘big bust’ scientifically. First of all the vast distances of space discovered and photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope evade all reasoning of the whole universe being compressed into a dot the size of a period at the end of a sentence. The very idea is embarrassing. Yet, it is still promulgated by the best ‘thinkers’ of our time.
Then, somehow, the dot exploded into all we see in the universe today. Poppycock! To teach this to our children is sheer propaganda and our kids should learn to be critical of this skepticism. Instead, they are graded on how well they absorb this baloney. When will we learn to let go of the myths of our day and accept the truth that there really IS a powerful God our Creator?
And have you ever seen an explosion result in order, beauty and harmony? Of course not! Explosions are only pretty to the ones selling dynamite. Everyone else knows they just make a big chaotic mess of things.
The limitless, beautiful and orderly universe did not come into being in a ‘big bang. No these things come only by and through design. Each orb you see out there is there by design. God made them and he knows each one by the name he gave it.
Here’s what the Bible shows: Psalms 147:2 The LORD doth build up Jerusalem: he gathers together the outcasts of Israel. 3 He heals the broken in heart, and binds up their wounds. 4 He tells the number of the stars; he calls them all by their names. 5 Great is our Lord, and of great power: his understanding is infinite.
6 The LORD lifts up the meek: he casts the wicked down to the ground.
21 Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? 22 It is he that sits upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretches out the heavens as a curtain, and spreads them out as a tent to dwell in: 23 that brings the princes to nothing; he makes the judges of the earth as vanity.
24 Yea, they shall not be planted; yea, they shall not be sown: yea, their stock shall not take root in the earth: and he shall also blow upon them, and they shall wither, and the whirlwind shall take them away as stubble. 25 To whom then will you compare me, or shall I be equal? Says the Holy One. 26 Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who has created these things, that brings out their host by number: he calls them all by names by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; not one fails.
And since there is order, beauty and harmony and these come only by design, then there has to be a Designer, Builder and Sustainer of the entire universe. We may as well get used to it. Real Science supports design and it’s Designer.
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘universe designed’ ‘planets spin backwards’
35. If evolution is real and it requires millions of year for life to ‘develop’, why do all life forms come fully developed?
A. They come fully developed because they could not live nor sustain themselves or their kind any other way. They all would have died long before they could ‘develop’. Think about what would happen if the first human that ‘crawled out of the sea’ took more than seven minutes to sprout a pair of lungs. They’d be dead on the spot. No time to develop anything except rigor mortis.
They were made that way. Lungs were not gills before evolution completed them. Nothing half-evolved would have survived. It’s that simple. All life forms came into being in a flash, not over the course of ‘millions of years’. The world and the universe just do not work that way. Down deep, everyone knows this. If they refuse to acknowledge that, they are not being honest.
Though it’s really about lifestyle choices and not about the evidence, check the fossil record. There are NO transitional forms to be found anywhere on earth. There should be multiple millions of them! Where’s the evidence? Why would adults refuse to acknowledge the truth if they really wanted to find it? Reality suggests they really don’t want to find the truth, even though they claim that is ‘all they are after.
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘no transitional forms’
36. Where are all the ‘transitional forms’ Evolution predicts? They should be everywhere, yet there are none to be found anywhere. Why?
A. Because there are none. They won’t ever be found because they simply don’t exist. Rather all life forms came into existence suddenly
.
The idea of any life form coming into existence over the course of ‘millions of years is a mere fairy story. Get over it, because it will never be confirmed by actual science.
It’s just wishful thinking. Now there are unscrupulous people who manufacture very clever fakes. But, when thoroughly examined and tested by the scientific method, they are exposed for the fraud that should be recognized as a crime.
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘no time to ‘develop’ or ‘why no transitional life forms?’
37. Lesser intelligence comes from greater; not greater from lesser as Evolutionists would have us believe. Why?
A. An example is robotics. We humans cannot create a robot or a computer greater than ourselves. They will always be lesser in power, influence and importance. That’s a well known physical law. It’s just the way the universe works. It’s not science to say that intelligent life gradually arose from pond scum or love sick ameba. Every life form is beautiful in design, elegant in function and perfect in its own lifestyle and reproduction. But it cannot rise to a level of existence greater than it started out being.
Of course caterpillars do become butterflies and tadpoles do become frogs, but they do not become horses or pigs. Each life form is limited and constrained to stay what it’s genetic and molecular makeup demands. Limits are a fact of life. I must get used to the fact.
Additionally, each life form is a separate entity in and of itself, which means it cannot transform or morph into another type of creature. Evolution says this happens all the time, yet can offer no proof. We are supposed to buy into that hook, line and sinker without question because they say so? No. They are going to have an uphill battle convincing me without real repeatable proof. Otherwise it’s fantasy and certainly not science.
This can only be explained by the existence of a greater Creator.
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘lesser intelligence into greater?’
38. Why can’t evolutionary theory explain the presence of mind, emotions, memory, creativity, reason, thought, personality, speech, imagination, learning, intuition, teaching, senses or any part of the mind itself?
A. Because these are functions of the spirit and not of the flesh. It doesn’t just come by itself. It is not the result of chemicals self-assembling into a human being. It is given, bestowed or built-in. We do have the powers listed above and a lot more control over some than others in that we can choose what we feed our minds. We can choose to learn this or that and subsequently we can choose what to do with acquired knowledge.
These are real powers we all are born with. We can be careful or reckless, because we have been given the responsibility to choose for ourselves. The question is ‘How do I choose right from wrong?’ The answer lies in what spirit we allow. This also is a choice. We can follow the spirit of the world (people or society), our own human conscience or that of the deceiver.
I know it is not popular to believe in a Devil or Satan, but Jesus did. Anyone can be deceived if we aren’t careful. Evolutionary theory has no explanation for the mind, or anything outside the realm of imagination. This is to say that it has only the explanatory power as its proponent.
The question that comes to my mind as a follow-up question is ‘Why do all animals lack the comparative vastness of intellect human beings enjoy? If we all descended from ‘a common ancestor’, all animals should have minds at least comparable to ours, but they don’t even come close.
Evolution has no explanation for our minds and all their powers because evolution is imaginary. So what is the right answer to the question of the origin of the human mind? We certainly did not make ourselves. We were not dropped here from the ‘Mother Ship’. We are here and have our being because we were engendered by our Maker, Creator and Father who wants to give us all things, including permanent life. Evolution cannot compete with that.
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘origin of mind’
39. Pre-programmed animal instinct requires information installed at conception by a Programmer. Why? And how can evolution account for this?
A. Animals act and react according to built-in instinct and instinct is not re-programmable. This is to say for example, the nature of a horse cannot be re-programmed into that of a dog or a cat. Each animal type or body plan functions or acts and reacts according to its own life-design plan.
This requires tons of information. The information has a separate Source apart from the animal, since the animal did not create itself. It has to have had a brighter, more intelligent and powerful Programmer for it to exist at all. There is simply no other explanation. Why don’t evolutionists just admit this?
The answer is proponents of this fallacy called evolution won’t hear it because they might have to change their lifestyle and they refuse to let go of their sins. They like them and would rather die than switch. May we all be careful about this, for God may grant our request. Be careful what you ask for. You may not articulate this or speak to God defiantly, but it is by our choices and subsequent actions that we can express our rebellion towards him.
He is in the heavens. We are on the Earth. Therefore let us all choose carefully and wisely whom we believe and serve.
Evolution leaves us with no future beyond the here and now. God offers us real and permanent life, not just this temporary one. Is it wise to slap his hand away?
Evolution cannot account for mind, nor for instinct. Where did all the information come from? It had to come from a Source greater than its subsequent. That is the way the universe works. That is reality. Anything else is simply denial. It’s time we all dealt with this and accepted the truth.
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘instinct and evolution’
40. Micro life is as complicated as the universe yet is full of living machinery functioning a certain way in all cells in all body plans in all moments of life and in all parts of the world at all times. Why can’t evolution account for this?
A. Evolution hold-outs still revere Charles Darwin as if he were the ultimate authority on how life arose, yet he knew nothing about genetics or the design and function of the cell. In Darwin’s day, the finest microscopes made the cell look like an indeterminate blob of goo. No wonder he came up with the wordy nonsensical descriptions we find in the ‘Origin of the Species’ and ‘The Decent of Man’.
Sometimes I wonder if any modern-day evolutionists have even read any of it. They rarely, if ever, talk about its poor English, grammatical errors and extreme wordiness. It is an excruciating bore to get through. Apparently he was trying to snow us with his ability to put words on paper, regardless of the lack of meaning built-in to them. The more the words, the less the meaning. No writer of our day could or would write this way, lest he be laugh out of the editors’ office and run out of town on a rail.
(Read it for yourself when you need a good nights’ sleep.)
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘complexity of the cell’
41. Why can’t humans create life? Evolution says nothing was able to create life. But as intelligent as we are, we can’t do it? What’s wrong with this picture?
A. Have you ever wanted to create a living thing? I have. But I don’t have what it takes. Neither does anyone else. But we are so bright, so enlightened, so intelligent and creative. Reality check: we are also limited.
Though our creative prowess is powerful, strong, resourceful and imaginative, even God-like, we can’t do it. That is where the boundaries are set and there is nothing we can do to change that. Evolutionists have no explanation of this except to pretend that the real reason is that life takes millions of years to do.
Yet if that were so, every living creature would die long before they could self assemble or develop.
The whole idea of things evolving on their own requires a lot of ability to pretend. It is neurotic in that it is stupid behavior by non-stupid people. There is something wrong with their thinking and it is that they don’t like to retain God in their knowledge because their deeds are evil and they don’t relish the idea of being exposed. They get rid of their guilt by getting rid of the God that they think requires them to feel that guilt.
Again, may I refer you to Romans 1:19- Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God has showed it unto them. 20 For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: 21 Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, 23 And changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. 24 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonor their own bodies between themselves: 25 who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.
26 For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: 27 And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet.
28 And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient; 29 Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, 30 Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 31 Without understanding, covenant-breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: 32 Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them.
This is the most thorough, succinct indictment of the heinous ‘theory’ of evolution and its proponents that I can imagine. I didn’t have to write those words; God had them written by Paul the apostle. They speak the truth.
Bottom line? God has set certain limits beyond which we will never be able to exceed. People do not like to be so restricted. They do not like God because they want to be the one in full control. To me, it is better to let go of the reigns and leave the driving to the One who knows the way. That way I don’t have the heavy burden of carrying a heavy load I was never intended to have to bear. Now it’s gone and he is in charge of my life. I don’t want control anymore. My timing, my reasoning, my ideas STINK, by comparison! Father knows best; not me.
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘humans can’t create life’
42. Evolutionists still cling to the ‘Big Bang’ model as to the origin of the universe, however chaotic. Creationists don’t buy this. Why? Why doesn’t chaos result in order, as evolution proposes?
A. Because explosions do not create beauty, harmony, complexity, order, absolute laws, physics or life, even if the Big Bang explosion took billions of years. Have you ever seen an explosion make order or beauty? Have you ever seen an explosion take ‘billions of years? Why is the universe still expanding? Why do astronomers keep finding new galaxies at the rate of about one per week? I think they will someday discover that each and every planet, solar system and galaxy is an individual act of enormous creative genious and power.
I’m saying the ‘Big Bang’ is unproveable and it doesn’t have the explanatory power to answer the basic questions of the origin of the universe or life itself. To me, the whole idea is just silly and should be dismissed out of hand for lack of evidence.
Beauty comes from a great Mind, not from chaos. Harmony comes only from a Spirit of harmony. Complexity comes from an understanding Mind capable of building it. Order comes only from a Mind that can choose it. Absolute Laws come only from those able to enforce them and their governments. Physics come only from the One who can decide how things ought to be, do, act and react within his realm and who has the powers needed to make them happen and sustain them. Life comes only from pre-existing life and the only Being powerful enough to create, build, govern, maintain and sustain the life he creates.
Nothing comes from nothing. Nothing ever could.
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘big bang debunked’
43. Why do prophecies about the Christ and their precise fulfillment in him require a powerful God to bring it to pass?
A. Some scholars claim there are more than 300 Old Testament prophecies pointing to Jesus Christ. Get a copy of my eBook ‘The Jesus IQ Test’ to see the top 31 of these. Note: Some scholars intimate that there are more than 300 such prophecies referring to Jesus Christ. These 31 are the most reliable and verifiable ones I have found. But even so, the statistical likelihood of only 8 of them being fulfilled in one individual is 1 in 1017th , according to Peter Stoner in Science Speaks (Moody Press, 1963).
‘That would be 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000. In order to help us comprehend this staggering probability, Stoner illustrates it by supposing that "we take 1017 silver dollars and lay them on the face of Texas. They will cover all of the state two feet deep.
"Now mark one of these silver dollars and stir the whole mass thoroughly, all over the state. Blindfold a man and tell him that he can travel as far as he wishes, but he must pick up one silver dollar and say that this is the right one. What chance would he have of getting the right one? Just the same chance that the prophets would have had of writing these eight prophecies and having them all come true in any one man."’
(Quote taken from Christian Apologetics & Research Ministry. www.carm.org/prophecy-bible-and-jesus)
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘Christ prophecies proof’
44. Don’t evolutionists need a Savior?
A. Many if not all evolutionists believe that when they are dead they are dead and that is all there is to it. They will be buried and never be seen or heard from again. All that they were will be gone and forgotten forever. But as author and comedian Penn Jillette has said: ‘How much do you Christians have to hate people if there is any possibility of there being an afterlife and don’t at least try to tell someone?’ Even though he believes there is no God, he still believes Christians should proselytize. So do I.
Let’s face it, perilous times are here. It’s going to get a lot worse, according to Jesus in Matthew 24. Evolution seems clueless because it cannot predict the future and there is no guide book that can foretell what’s coming down the pike at them. We can’t find it in the Origin of Species or the Descent of Man, that’s for sure. What’s so scary, you might ask? Israel is on the west, Iran on the east and Iraq is in between. Iraq, according to the Brookings Institute, has more oil than Saudi Arabia.
The oil ocean buried in Iraq is less than 100 feet down. Its depth is virtually bottomless. When the war there goes nuclear, we’re all in jeopardy of survival. They’re going to nuke the oil fields in Iraq. An unwelcome lake of fire will thus explode on the world scene, causing darkness from the smoke, global superheating, and the end of weather. Earthquakes, huge hurricanes and tsunamis will be common. The icecaps, including most of Greenland, will melt, flooding away the islands of the earth.
This unquenchable fire, with the bottomless pit of oil for fuel, will compromise all life on earth, including yours and mine. What if daily temperature increased by only 1 degree per day? At that rate, after only 1 year, outside temps will be lethal at over 400 degrees F!
It’s wise to be afraid of things that potentially could kill you. Science can’t save us. Neither can governments, politicians, the medical and pharmaceutical industry, the military or industry.
That’s exactly why you and I, regardless of our beliefs, need a Savior. It’s a matter of survival of the nations and the entire planet itself. Only the Bible has told us about these things and given us the way out. His name is Jesus. He’s the Maker of the earth. He alone will know how to fix what we screw up. He’s the Master of molecules and has all the power to make things right again.
We need him for life. The big question is: How will you and yours survive without him? If only one out of ten are left alive at the return of Christ, which one in your family will it be? Jesus is called the ‘Savior of the world’ for a good reason. It’s not just a spiritual salvation. It’s quite literal and on-the-ground real. You can see it coming. Will you be ready? Everyone needs the Savior. Be smart and stay sharp. Get wisdom while it’s still available. Seek Jesus and find him. Go to a quiet private place with your Bible at hand and ask him to come and meet with you in your spirit. He promised that we would show up if you seek him diligently.
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘wise men still seek him’
45. Is evolution just another religion with nothing as god, no purpose for life and no future?
A. Religion is man’s attempt to absolve himself from guilt by fashioning a god that can release him from it. It is man seeking God. Evolution is a little bit different. It is man’s attempt to absolve himself from guilt by fashioning a story that removes any god that can make him feel guilty. It is man denying God.
Adherents to this fairy story are a god to themselves. They make up the rules as they go along as if they owned the place. Denial is wishful thinking and childish. Stupid behavior by non-stupid people is called neurosis. Evolutionists are not stupid people. In fact, they are some of the most brilliant and articulate minds on the planet.
Some of them are even more honest that certain religious people. But they deny what would bring them fully to life when they could have had it to the full. That doesn’t seem all that bright to me. It’s akin to someone trading a limitless fortune for a cigar box of trinkets. As to the purpose of life, in my opinion, the Christians win.
They get permanent life, unlimited frequent flier miles and no worries about what they might loose ever again. They get a permanent home that will never be taken away and a great job they dearly love with no possibility of layoffs, firings or cuts in pay. They get deep lasting relationships with those they love and cherish and plenty of time to enjoy one another’s company.
In addition they will have powers to get things done and to help others with no limits to their resources. They will inherit the earth as their headquarters planet and have a close personal relationship with its King. This future looks ever brighter, while the evolutionist has only the blackness and silence of permanent death to look forward to. Choose wisely.
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘evolution is a religion’
46. If computers, TV’s and other great inventions have creators, and they are not alive, how much more do living things require a Creator?
A. As bright as we humans are, we have definite limits. We cannot create life. If we, being intelligent can’t do it, how much less can nothing create it? It doesn’t have what it takes. This sounds like a simple answer, but reality suggests that complicated life, in any form, requires a higher intelligence than what is created.
Life is impossible without a Creator with all the math, science, physics, chemistry, architecture, etc. and all the unknowns of life mastered, in order for life to exist. Since life does exist, so must its Creator. Do you exist? Just pinch yourself and you will find out.
Are you really comforted by the idea that you did not have a Creator? If you had no Creator, how do you account for the extreme complexity of your own body? Have you ever studied anatomy? At the cellular level, just observing one of the different types of cells of which there are many in your body, you will have to admit there is order, perfect functionality and elegance in the cells design and build.
But, you don’t have to go to an electron microscope to grasp your body’s intricate complex and complicated structure. Just look at the systems that all function together. The largest organ in your body is the skin. It is generally waterproof, air-tight, flexible, intrusion resistant and elastic. It keeps the bad out and the good in, while helping to keep all the other systems and parts in their places. That’s one system.
Then let’s consider the muscular system. This is how we move, walk, lift, run, swim, etc. Blood vessels nourish the intricate network with energy-bearing food particles carried there by the blood itself. This leads us to the circulatory system without which we would immediately die. The circulatory system is a vast tubular network comprised of thousands of miles of blood carrying pathways, having their own sets of valves and other control points which help keep the blood flowing properly.
The blood is pumped by the heart to the lungs and throughout the body. Then there’s the Pulmonary, Endocrine, Skeletal, Nervous, Glandular and Organ systems. All of which work together to allow life for a typical 70+ year lifespan.
The closer we study anatomy, the more complexity we find. This is the opposite of the Darwinian evolutionary expectation. He apparently thought the closer we look the simpler it would appear, but this is not the case at all.
Bottom line? Complexity indicates more than design and planning aforethought. It requires the spark of life, the power to make it come into being and the power to sustain it with all the pre-requisites and pre-established earth parameters to keep it going over the few thousands of years men have walked the earth. Life requires a Life Giver.
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘life requires a Life-giver’
47. Evolutionists say life is so easy, so automatic, it just comes on its own, undirected, then why can’t they make it happen?
A. Millions of years, that’s why. They can’t replicate natural spontaneous genesis because of the time constraints. As mentioned above, humans don’t have what it takes. Life is not simple or easy and it never creates itself. We never observe it arising spontaneously. Why not? Because we don’t have enough time.
Seems to me if evolution was smart enough to bring life into being with its millions of years, it should have been able to provide permanent life instead of just a temporary one. But then, only God can do that, and all evolution believers will never acknowledge him.
All of life, every life form is interconnected and dependent on other life forms for its existence. No human will ever have the power to create anything alive. It is way beyond the bounds of human limitation. It’s a sheer waste of time to even try.
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘undirected life’ or ‘life in the test tube’ or ‘humans create life in the lab’
48. Is the God of the Bible, particularly the ‘Old Testament’ really ‘a cruel, malevolent, bully’? Does teaching kids about Hell as a place of eternal torment constitute child abuse?
A. Death of the first born of Egypt; the Flood; Joshua leading the Israelites to the Promised Land, exterminating men, women and children at the guiding hand of the Lord. At first blush it may appear that way but if he is God, he owns his Creation and can do with it whatever he pleases. So who are we to judge him?
Shall the pot say to the Potter: ‘What are you doing?’
He owns the entire universe and all that is in it. Consider the fact that, according to the Bible, God is a loving and good God who allows us free choice because he cares about us and wants us to learn character through our choices. As such free moral agents, we are free to create evil and hurt or kill other human beings. It is not he that is cruel, but we.
From the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science website comes this article: 'Religion’s Real Child Abuse', by Richard Dawkins, Sunday, May 14, 2006: ‘In the wake of the current scandal over child abuse by priests , I have had a letter from an American woman in her mid forties who was brought up Roman Catholic. She has two strong recollections from when she was seven. She was sexually abused by her parish priest in his car. And around the same time a little school friend of hers, who had tragically died, went to hell because she was a Protestant. Or so my correspondent was led to believe by the then official doctrine of her church. (emphasis mine throughout) Her view now is that, of these two examples of Roman Catholic child abuse, the one physical and the other mental, the second was by far the worst.
She writes:
"Being fondled by the priest simply left the impression (from the mind of a 7 year old) as 'yuchy' while the memory of my friend going to hell was one of cold, immeasurable fear. I never lost sleep because of the priest (?) but I spent many a night being terrified that the people I loved would go to Hell. It gave me nightmares."
I am sure her experience is far from unique. And what if we assume a less altruistic child, worried about her own eternity rather than a friend's? Odious as the physical abuse of children by priests undoubtedly is, I suspect that it may do them less lasting damage than the mental abuse of bringing them up Catholic in the first place.
Happily I was spared the misfortune of a Roman Catholic upbringing (Anglicanism is a significantly less noxious strain of the virus). Being fondled by the Latin master in the Squash Court was a disagreeable sensation for a nine-year-old, a mixture of embarrassment and skin-crawling revulsion, but it was certainly not in the same league as being led to believe that I, or someone I knew, might go to everlasting fire. As soon as I could wriggle off his knee, I ran to tell my friends and we had a good laugh, our fellowship enhanced by the shared experience of the same sad pedophile. I do not believe that I, or they, suffered lasting, or even temporary damage from this disagreeable physical abuse of power. Given the Latin Master's eventual suicide, maybe the damage was all on his side.
Of course I accept that his misdemeanors, although by today's standards enough to earn imprisonment followed by a life sentence of persecution by vigilantes, were mild compared to those committed by some priests now in the news. I am in no position to make light of the horrific experiences of their altar-boy victims. But reports of child abuse cover a multitude of sins, from mild fondling to violent buggery, and I am sure many of those cases now embarrassing the church fall at the mild end of the spectrum. Doubtless, too, some fall at the violent end, which is terrible but I would make two points about it.
First, just because some pedophile assaults are violent and painful, it doesn't mean that all are. A child too young to notice what is happening at the hands of a gentle pedophile will have no difficulty at all in noticing the pain inflicted by a violent one. Phrases like 'predatory monster' are not discriminating enough, and are framed in the light of adult hang-ups.
Second (and this is the point with which I began) the mental abuse constituted by an unsubstantiated threat of violence and terrible pain, if sincerely believed by the child, could easily be more damaging than the physical actuality of sexual abuse. An extreme threat of violence and pain is precisely what the doctrine of hell is. And there is no doubt at all that many children sincerely believe it, often continuing right through adulthood and old age until death finally releases them.
It will be said that the Catholic Church no longer preaches hell fire in its full horror. That depends on how up-market is your area and how progressive your priest. But eternal punishment certainly was the normal doctrine dished out to congregations, including terrified children, back in the time when many of the priests now facing expulsion or prosecution committed their physical abuses. Most of the victims bringing or supporting lawsuits are now in their middle years. They therefore, along with many others who were never physically abused, probably experienced mental terrorism of the hell fire type.
The long retrospect of the law entitles middle-aged victims to lucrative redress, decades after they suffered physically. Nobody thinks the physical injuries of sexual abuse could possibly last decades , so the damages now being claimed have to be the mental consequences of the original physical abuse. A typical claimant, now 54, said that his "life was marred by inexplicable confusions, anger, depression and lost faith." (Parenthetically, one can't help marveling at the idea of a life being marred by lost faith. Perhaps it would get the sympathy of a jury.) But the point is this. If you can sue for the long-term mental damage caused by physical child abuse, why should you not sue for the long-term mental damage caused by mental child abuse? Only a minority of priests abuse the bodies of the children in their care. But how many priests abuse their minds? Why aren't Catholics and ex-Catholics lining up to sue the church into the ground, for a lifetime of psychological damage?
I am not advocating this course of action. Much as I would like to see the Roman Catholic Church ruined, I hate opportunistically retrospective litigation even more. Lawyers, who grow fat by digging dirt on long-forgotten wrongs, and hounding their aged perpetrators, are no friends of mine. All I am doing is calling attention to an anomaly. By all means, let's kick a nasty institution when it is down, but there are better ways than litigation. And an obsessive concentration on sexual abuse by priests is in danger of blinding us to all their other forms of child abuse.
The threat of eternal hell is an extreme example of mental abuse, just as violent sodomy is an extreme example of physical abuse. Most physical abuse is milder, and so is most of the mental abuse inherent in a typical religious education. The priest who urged a 14-year-old altar boy to give him oral sex, "blessing it as a way to receive Holy Communion" wasn't only abusing the trust normally enjoyed by any teacher, youth leader or scoutmaster. He was cashing in on the years of religious brainwashing that the child had endured as a cradle Catholic. Holy Communion: nice one! But again, only an extreme example of what churches ? and also mosques and synagogues ? Do to child minds in their care, in the normal course of events.
'What shall we tell the children?' is a superb polemic on how religions abuse the minds of children, by the distinguished psychologist Nicholas Humphrey.
It was originally delivered as a lecture in aid of Amnesty International, and has now been reissued as a chapter of his book, The Mind Made Flesh, just published by Oxford University Press. It is also available on the worldwide web and I strongly recommend it.
Humphrey argues that, in the same way as Amnesty works tirelessly to free political prisoners the world over, we should work to free the children of the world from the religions which, with parental approval, damage minds too young to understand what is happening to them. He is right, and the same lesson should inform our discussions of the current pedophile brouhaha. Priestly groping of child bodies is disgusting. But it may be less harmful in the long run than priestly subversion of child minds.’
I am inclined to agree with Professor Dawkins on this one. To frighten innocent children with a misrepresentation of what scriptures teach is sin. So, what does the Bible tell us about hell? Is it a real place? Are there people burning there right now? Will people really burn there consciously in abject torture for all eternity? Does the Bible really support this?
I’m here to stand up and say: NO! The Bible does NOT support this foul and blasphemous doctrine. It doesn’t fit the compassionate loving model of God at all. Look, if hell as an ever-burning ever-conscious place of torment was real, Jesus, who got the sins of the whole world dumped on him in the crucifixion didn’t receive hell as the punishment, neither will we.
The ‘wages of sin is death.’ (Romans 6:23) It never says the wages are eternal life in the flames of hell. We must all be very careful of what we accuse God of. He is not a mean cruel ogre worse than Satan himself; yet people, who long to have power and control over others concoct these erroneous doctrines for their own benefit.
The doctrine of hell is unfortunately firmly entrenched in our culture today, but the younger generation is not so easily duped. They research. They study into things more, now that the internet is here. They want to know the truth.
May I suggest you look into this hell enigma until you are fully convinced you have the truth about hell? Look into the original Greek and Hebrew manuscripts.
Paul never mentions it, though he wrote over half of the New Testament. Jesus never spoke of it either, though sincere preachers across the land keep spouting the untruth that ‘Jesus spoke more about hell then he did about heaven’. It’s simply not true.
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘why Christians become atheists’ or ‘reasonable atheism?’
49. Why are the physical conditions seemingly fine tuned to accommodate mankind?
A. The physics of the earth are set up to accommodate mankind: 4 seasons; a 24 hour day so he has 12 hours to rest and 12 to work; soil, water and sunlight so he can have food and drink; just the right oxygen content in the air he breathes; the right temperature so he doesn’t get to hot or cold; sunlight to provide warmth, energy, wood, photosynthesis, vitamin D, etc. If God had not set it up, it could never have come by chance.
There are several other factors contributing to the benefit of mankind which I don’t have space to go into; such as the right size sun and moon, the right distances from these and the other planets in our solar system. The chances of all the factors coming into being on one planet are so tiny, they are less than zero, according to statistical data found in Lee Strobel’s ‘The Case For a Creator’, Frank Turek and Norman Geisler’s book ‘I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist’ and many other science laden books debunking evolution. I recommend careful and thoughtful consideration of these books for further study.
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘earth’s fine tuning’ or ‘Case for a Creator’
Links: www.crossexamined.org and www.LeeStrobel.com .
50. Evolution has no future; neither do its adherents who would rather die than accept Jesus. Is that what you call ‘Bright’?
A. Talk about painting oneself into a corner! Evolutionists have a dead end, literally. What makes it worse is they don’t care, seems to me. They would rather indulge themselves today even if it costs their tomorrow. Now does that seem bright to you? No, it is not bright to want only this life.
We come to life in a carbon-based body that can only live for a short time. Then we die. Atheists say that is all there is. There is no life after death. But what if they are wrong? Is there really a way to know for sure without dying to find out? According to Jesus, we can enter into life through faith in him.
Innately and naturally, we all ponder life and death. Why are we here? What is life about? Do I have meaning and significance? Where am I going? What is death? Is there life after death? What is the Purpose of Life? Questions like these are clearly beyond science to answer.
Atheists don’t care about eternal life. They supposedly ‘know’ it isn’t so. But what if it is real and you miss it? Would your life not have been little more than an exercise in futility? Is it smart or bright to not want to live forever? No, especially when the potential to do so is really there through belief in Jesus Christ. There is so much more to life than usually imagined. There is a great future to look forward to, as I will explain later.
YouTube ® suggestion: Just type in the search bar: ‘purpose of life’ or ‘life’s meaning’.
