THE HISTORICAL JESUS: Scholars debate it!

As a part of our Friday series "Ancient Non-Christian Historical Sources for Jesus of Nazareth", I wanted you to listen to the first part of a scholarly discussion regarding the historical information surrounding Christ and his life. 

There are few minds within Christian Academia more qualified to speak on this matter that Dr. Gary Habermas (www.garyhabermas.com) from Liberty University.  He is considered to be one of, if not the, world experts on the historical research of Jesus of Nazareth, whether it be from Christian or non-Christian sources.

Kick back, enjoy, ..... and have an Intelligent Faith!

- Pastor J. 

Darwin Critic Wins the Templeton Prize; Congratulations to Dalai Lama

Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, is the winner of this year's Templeton Prize, worth $1.7 million. The Templeton Foundation recognizes him for his "long-standing engagement with multiple dimensions of science," having "vigorously focused on the connections between the investigative traditions of science and Buddhism," encouraging "serious scientific investigative reviews of the power of compassion and its broad potential to address the world's fundamental problems."

Nice! Speaking of science, here's an addendum.

At least when it comes to understanding Darwinian theory, its limitations and dangers, there are some priests, pastors and rabbis who might benefit from taking a lesson from Tibetan Buddhism's renowned spiritual leader. The Dalai Lama's 2005 book, The Universe in a Single Atom, includes an excellent chapter, "Evolution, Karma, and the World of Sentience." Check it out -- it reads a little like an update of Alfred Russel Wallace's World of Life.

The Dalai Lama has spent some serious time studying up on evolutionary theory and talking about it with scientists. He casts a respectful but markedly critical eye on Darwinian science and scientism.

"On the whole," he writes, "the Darwinian theory of evolution...gives us a fairly coherent account of the evolution of human life on earth." Something about that sentence prompts you to expect the coming "But" or "However," and the Dalai Lama doesn't disappoint. Philosophically and scientifically, he finds a variety of reasons for dissatisfaction.

After a discussion of how natural selection operates on genetic mutations, he writes that it may be a mistake to think of mutations as random: "that they are purely random strikes me as unsatisfying. It leaves open the question of whether this randomness is best understood as an objective feature of reality or better understood as indicating some kind of hidden causality."

His causes for doubting materialist explanations of life's development include the question of how life originated, how compassion, altruism and sentience evolved, and whether Darwinism is testable science:

“Despite the success of the Darwinian narrative, I do not believe that all the elements of the story are in place....I am not persuaded that [Darwin's theory] answers the fundamental question of the origin of life. Darwin himself, I gather, did not see this as an issue. Furthermore, there appears to be a certain circularity in the notion of the "survival of the fittest." The theory of natural selection maintains that, of the random mutations that occur in the genes of a given species, those that promote the greatest chance of survival are most likely to succeed. However, the only way this hypothesis can be verified is to observe the characteristics of those mutations that survived. So in a sense, we are stating simply this: "Because these genetic mutations have survived, they are the ones that had the greatest chance of survival."

A truism, obviously.

He goes on to repeat his dissatisfaction with "the idea of these mutations being purely random events" and cites Karl Popper who

“once commented that, to his mind, Darwin's theory of evolution does not and cannot explain the origin of life on earth. For him, the theory of evolution is not a testable scientific theory but rather a metaphysical theory that is highly beneficial for guiding further scientific research”.

The Dalai Lama identifies the "hidden causality" guiding evolution's course with karma and observes pointedly: "From the scientific view, the theory of karma may be a metaphysical assumption -- but it is no more so than the assumption that all of life is material and originated out of pure chance." For further study he recommends a particular tradition in Buddhism:

“As to what might be the mechanism through which karma plays a causal role in the evolution of sentience, I find helpful some of the explanations given in the Vajraysana traditions, often referred to by modern writers as esoteric Buddhism.”

The Dalai Lama finds that an "empirical problem in Darwinism's focus on the competitive survival of individuals...has consistently been how to explain altruism, whether in the sense of collaborative behavior, such as food sharing or conflict resolution among animal like chimpanzees or acts of self-sacrifices." The problem is especially notable where altruism "can be observed across species."

He's even got a pretty clear take on the "Why it matters" question.

“If twentieth-century history -- with its widespread belief in social Darwinism and the many terrible effects of trying to apply eugenics that resulted from it -- has anything to teach us, it is that we humans have a dangerous tendency to turn the visions we construct of ourselves into self-fulfilling prophecies.”

An application might be that insofar as we think of ourselves as nothing more elevated or spiritual than beasts, then we'll act and treat each other that way, bestially.

The Dalai Lama concludes with a discussion of how the "Darwinian account" leaves out, as "unexamined," the deep enigma of sentience: "Until there is a credible understanding of the nature and origin of consciousness, the scientific story of the origin of life and the cosmos will not be complete."

Well, well. Next time someone tells you that only naïve Biblical literalism keeps anyone from fully accepting Darwin's idea, or that only Americans would be so foolish as to think an immaterial source of causality guides evolution or that material explanations fail to address the mystery of life's origin, you might want to point out the writings of the Dalai Lama.

Here is a man who has spoken out as forcefully on these subjects as any major Christian or Jewish leader has done. Arguably, he's done so with greater clarity and concreteness, leaving little room for those who would second-guess and reinterpret cloudy, ambiguous expressions.

It could well be that it's precisely the Biblical heritage in the West, or rather embarrassment at the cartoon version peddled by Darwin defenders, that keeps many otherwise thoughtful Christians and Jews from thinking critically about materialist science and its dogmas. Maybe that's why the Dalai Lama, from an entirely different tradition and unbothered by our hang-ups and anxieties, feels free to reflect and speak boldly for himself.

 Have an Intelligent Faith!!

-Nelis

Series: "The Case for a Creator, THE EVIDENCE OF BIOLOGICAL INFORMATION: THE CHALLENGE OF DNA AND THE ORIGIN OF LIFE"

Human DNA contains more organized information than the Encyclopedia Britannica. If the full text of the encyclopedia were to arrive in computer code from outer space, most people would regard this as proof of the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence. But when seen in nature, it is explained as the workings of random forces. George Sim Johnson

Einstein said, “God does not play dice.” He was right. God plays Scrabble. Philip Gold

For more than fifty years, as scientists have studied the six feet of DNA that’s tightly coiled inside every one of our body’s one hundred trillion cells, they have marveled at how it provides the genetic information necessary to create all of the proteins out of which our bodies are built. In fact, each one of the thirty thousand genes that are embedded in our twenty-three pairs of chromosomes can yield as many as 20,500 different kinds of proteins. The astounding capacity of microscopic DNA to harbor this mountain of information, carefully spelled out in a four-letter chemical alphabet, “vastly exceeds that of any other known system,” said geneticist Michael Denton. In fact, he said the information needed to build the proteins for all the species of organisms that have ever lived—a number estimated to be approximately one thousand million—“could be held in a teaspoon and there would still be room left for all the information in every book ever written.”

What is DNA?

DNA serves as the information storehouse for a finely choreographed manufacturing process in which the right amino acids are linked together with the right bonds in the right sequence to produce the right kind of proteins that fold in the right way to build biological systems. The documentary Unlocking the Mystery of Life, which has aired on numerous PBS television stations, describes the elaborate operation this way:

In a process known as transcription, a molecular machine first unwinds a section of the DNA helix to expose the genetic instructions needed to assemble a specific protein molecule. Another machine then copies these instructions to form a molecule known as messenger RNA. When transcription is complete, the slender RNA strand carries the genetic information . . . out of the cell nucleus. The messenger RNA strand is directed to a two-part molecular factory called a ribosome. . . . Inside the ribosome, a molecular assembly line builds a specifically sequenced chain of amino acids. These amino acids are transported from other parts of the cell and then linked into chains often hundreds of units long. Their sequential determines the type of protein manufactured. When the chain is finished, it is moved from the ribosome to a barrel-shaped machine that helps fold it into the precise shape critical to its function. After the chain is folded into a protein, it is then released and shepherded by another molecular machine to the exact location where it is needed.

Where does the Information inside DNA come from?

This issue has caused all naturalistic accounts of the origin of life to break down, because it’s the critical and foundational question. If you can’t explain where the information comes from, you haven’t explained life, because it’s the information that makes the molecules into something that actually functions. The origin of information in DNA—which is necessary for life to begin—is best explained by an intelligent cause rather than any of the types of naturalistic causes that scientists typically use to explain biological phenomena.

We know from our experience that we can convey information with a twenty-six-letter alphabet, or twenty-two, or thirty—or even just two characters, like the zeros and ones used in the binary code in computers. One of the most extraordinary discoveries of the twentieth century was that DNA actually stores information—the detailed instructions for assembling proteins—in the form of a four-character digital code. The characters happen to be chemicals called adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine. Scientists represent them with the letters A, G, C, and T, and that’s appropriate because they function as alphabetic characters in the genetic text. Properly arranging those four ‘bases,’ as they’re called, will instruct the cell to build different sequences of amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins. Different arrangements of characters yields different sequences of amino acids.

DNA as a library

The organism accesses the information that it needs from DNA so it can build some of its critical components. In DNA, there are long lines of A, C, G, and T’s that are precisely arranged in order to create protein structure and folding. To build one protein, you typically need 1,200 to 2,000 letters or bases—which is a lot of information.

There’s a certain level of folding that a protein has to have, called tertiary structure, that is necessary for it to perform a function. You don’t get tertiary structure in a protein unless you have at least seventy-five amino acids or so. That may be conservative. Now consider what you’d need for a protein molecule to form by chance. First, you need the right bonds between the amino acids. Second, amino acids come in right-handed and left-handed versions, and you’ve got to get only left-handed ones. Third, the amino acids must link up in a specified sequence, like letters in a sentence. Run the odds of these things falling into place on their own and you find that the probabilities of forming a rather short functional protein at random would be one chance in a hundred thousand trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion. That’s a ten with 125 zeroes after it!

And that would only be one protein molecule—a minimally complex cell would need between three hundred and five hundred protein molecules. Plus, all of this would have to be accomplished in a mere 100 million years, which is the approximate window of time between the Earth cooling and the first microfossils we’ve found. To suggest chance against those odds is really to invoke a naturalistic miracle. It’s a confession of ignorance. It’s another way of saying, ‘We don’t know.’ And since the 1960s, scientists, to their credit, have been very reluctant to say that chance played any significant role in the origin of DNA or proteins—even though, as you say, it’s still unfortunately a live option in popular thinking.

One more example of how improbable it is for life to have evolved from nothing.

Research all the evidences, find the truth for yourself and remember….

Have an Intelligent Faith!!

-        -  Nelis

Series: Question of the week by Dr. William Lane Craig, The Trinity and Siamese Twins"

Is the trinity like siamese triplets or like a cerberus?

What does triune mean?

For this week's question, Dr. Craig received a question about the trinity. The question had to do with an analogy he used in one of his podcasts on the Doctrine of the Trinity. We encourage you to listen to Dr. Craig's podcasts on itunes. In the search box under podcasts type in Dr. William Lane Craig, defenders or click here for a list directly from his website. And now the question:

Dear Dr. Craig,

I was looking into your podcast and came across your lectures on the Doctrine of the Trinity and I was amazed at how you were able to make sense of this doctrine even though there have been many attempts of analogies trying to illustrate our Triune God (none of which accurately represents the Trinity). Well, I would just like to note that I believe our Triune God is unique and that no analogy could illustrate his divine being. Nevertheless this doctrine has troubled me intellectually for a long time but wanting to know my God deeper, I came across your model of the Trinity which did helped me a lot. Thank you for that.

Well my question will eventually spring forth as I unravel my concerns. In part 8 of your lecture on "The Doctrine of the Trinity" you attempted to create a model of the Trinity by using the mythical character Cerberus. You did say that you felt uneasy using this model (I do too, but nevertheless it did help me).

Anyway, you began by saying that Cerberus has three heads and one body and so he has three minds and therefore three distinct states of consciousnesses. Cerberus therefore has three personalities and so he is Tri-personal. These three heads and one body can only be possible because the three minds are contained in this one physical body that Cerberus possesses. Then you further enhanced the story and added that suppose Hercules slays Cerberus and he dies yet his minds survived the death supposing they are immortal, In what sense then will they still be one being for there no longer remains a physical body to contain Cerberus's "tri-personal souls."

Well you then helped the listeners by looking into the nature of the Soul to better understand the doctrine of the Trinity. If I recall, you mentioned that what makes a human soul an individual person is because each soul is equipped with one set of rational faculties and volitional faculties which are sufficient for personhood. Now God is a soul, one being with instead of one set of rational and volitional faculties God has three sets of rational and volitional faculties. God is then one being that is three persons. This to me seems to preserve the doctrine of the Trinity. Thank you so much for this model and if I got everything right up to this point, here are my questions:

1) Would conjoined twins having two heads and one body or rather conjoined Triplets having three heads (three minds) and one body work the same way as in the scenario of Cerberus? That is, would there be one soul with three states of consciousnesses?

2) Furthermore, if that is true in the case of the conjoined triplets and thus having three states of consciousnesses, would the conjoined triplet be a Trinity if the triplet died because they are one soul or one being with three states of consciousnesses?

On another note I just want to add another question if you don't mind.

3) Earlier in this topic you mentioned that the Trinity is an identity statement to God himself and that when one says Jesus is God or the Father is God, one is not to understand it to be an identity statement but rather predications in which one means that Jesus has the property of being divine. Then you said that Jesus is not identical to the whole Godhead which is the Trinity but rather Jesus is a member of the Trinity. I became unsure of this because in Colossians 2:9 Paul writes, "For in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily." Am I to understand this as Jesus being equivalent to the Godhead or something else? Could you please help me out with this passage, I might not be taking it into context or I might not understand it the way it should be understood.

I just want to thank you again Dr. Craig for your work as it has helped me intellectually and faithfully with my walk with our Triune God.

Sincerely,

Thien
Canada

Dr. Craig responds:

Please click HERE to see Dr. Craig's response.

For  more questions of the week check out Dr. Craig's website reasonablefaith.org and if you have any questions you can email me or pastor J at intelligentfaith315@gmail.com or jason@claycup.com.

There is nothing wrong with asking questions, there is if you don't ask!!!

Christians raise $400 to help sick atheist who attacked their beliefs

Christians Help Atheist Who Fought Their Nativity Scene

K-house Enews - March 23, 2012

An atheist, Greene did not believe the religious symbol of Christmas had any place on government property. Then, as quickly as he blew into Henderson County, he withdrew. He believed he suffered from a detached retina and was going blind. He had to leave his job as a taxi driver, he elaborated, and he did not have health insurance, according to the Malakoff News. Greene thought his short foray into Henderson County ended there, but a group of Christians organized to offer him money. They asked how they could help and Greene, who was in the Air Force for eight years, admitted that he needed money for groceries until he sorted out his social security. When a check arrived for $400, he was surprised and touched. “They said they wanted to do what real Christians are supposed to do – love you – and they wanted to help,” Greene told TylerPaper.com.  Read the full MSNBC article here.

EASTER: Pagan celebration or Strategic Opportunity for Christians??

DEALING WITH THE EASTER DILEMMA 

(Reprinted from K-House e-newsletter)

The Easter Season is here, complete with baskets and cellophane grass and chocolate bunnies in every store. While we enjoy the chocolate bunnies and malted eggs, it's pretty obvious that cellophane grass has absolutely nothing to do with the Resurrection of our Lord. This time of year brings with it the annual uncomfortable question; what should we – as Christians – celebrate?
The term "Easter" itself alludes to the pagan roots of the holiday. The name comes from the Babylonian goddess, Ishtar (also, Astarte). It was the pagan preoccupation with fertility that linked rabbits' rapid breeding with the golden egg of Astarte. Passover, and therefore the Resurrection of Jesus, occur in the springtime. As Christianity spread, the celebration that Christ had conquered death came neatly at a time when the pagan world was celebrating the renewal of nature after the death of winter. And so, today we have Easter egg hunts at churches across America on Resurrection Sunday.
Is that good? Should we, as Christians, allow remnants of pagan celebrations into our celebration of Christ? For those who understand that Easter's fuzzy bunnies are really the residue of ancient Babylonian fertility religions, there seem to be two general choices.

1. Reject Easter Traditions: Some Christians separate themselves from the remnants of those old fertility religions. They remember Christ's Resurrection and forgo all the chocolate and hard boiled eggs. They may even celebrate Passover and Jesus as the Passover Lamb. They rejoice that he was raised again as the Firstborn from the dead (Col 1:18) on Sunday, the Feast of Firstfruits.

2: Make Use Of Easter Traditions:  Some Christians, on the other hand, see the Easter traditions as another opportunity to spread the Gospel. Some may take 12 plastic eggs, for example, and fill each one with one object from the story of Jesus' betrayal and death and his raising from the dead. The eggs contain things like coins, a sponge, nails, and a cross while the last one is empty, representing the empty tomb. Other people dye eggs, using each color to symbolize a different aspect of Christ's death and resurrection (red stands for his blood, etc). There are dozens of ways that Sunday School teachers and parents have incorporated the current Easter traditions into the celebration of Jesus Christ's resurrection.

Which is the better way?

We do not face this issue only at Easter. Most Christian holidays have leftover pagan traditions mixed into their celebrations. Do we stop giving out Valentines because boys and girls paired up for the (loosely connected) Roman festival of Lupercalia? Do we stop hanging mistletoe because it was once a part of fertility rights – or throw out Christmas altogether because the Romans celebrated Saturnalia in late December? Are those things unholy because they were once connected to paganism? Or can we use them as opportunities to spread the Gospel to our secular culture? How do we deal with these things according to the Word of God?

To The Jews First:
God gave Israel a law and a sacrificial system that would help them understand how the death of the Messiah could pay for sins. He gave them the Passover so they could understand that the blood of the Lamb would protect them from the wrath of God. God gave Israel feasts that stood as prophetic symbols - as types - of His plan for redemption. The Jews were primed to understand the purpose and mission of the Messiah, and while the eyes of many were blinded for a time, Jesus clearly stated that he came to the lost sheep of the House of Israel (Matt. 15:24).

Yet, Jesus came to save the whole world. The Gospel was for the Jews first, but also for the Gentiles according to the Scriptures (Isaiah 49:6, Acts 10:45, Rom. 1:16). The purpose of Israel was to be a light that shined the truth of God to all peoples.

And Also to the Gentiles: When evangelists in the Early Church went out to preach to the world, though, the pagan nations did not have the same background that the Jews had. They had sacrificial systems as well, but without the precious subtleties provided by the Law. They did not have the same feasts and laws to give them a cultural understanding of the messages they were being given. The missionaries had to find ways within the existing pagan cultures to help the gentiles appreciate who Jesus was.
Familiar with the Irish language and culture, St. Patrick worked to make use of local customs in order to help the pagans of Ireland understand Christianity. For example, tradition says he used the three-leafed clover, the shamrock, in order to explain the Trinity. Because the nature-worshiping religions saw the sun as a powerful symbol, he developed what is known as the Celtic Cross, with a circle around the central section of the cross. St. Patrick was not alone. Many early Church evangelists incorporated Christian teachings into existing celebrations, "Christianizing" those traditions.
Whether that was a good or bad thing has long been the subject of debate.  Some argue that those celebrations are not in the Bible and that mixing Christian beliefs with pagan traditions is at best distracting and is at worst a form of bowing the knee to those false gods.  
"Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you," (2 Cor. 6:17).
Others argue that Christianity has sanctified those celebrations, making the unholy holy.
"Unto the pure all things are pure:" (Titus 1:15). 

Paul and Plato:The Apostle Paul, sent by God to minister to the gentiles, believed in making the most of every opportunity (1 Cor. 9:18-23). Paul is famous for his use of Greek culture to get ideas across to his Greek audience. He constantly makes allusions to Plato with statements like, "…which are a shadow of things to come," (Col. 2:17) and "For now we see through a glass, darkly," (1 Cor. 13:10). Do Paul's frequent allusions to Plato indicate that Plato himself was inspired by God? No. Rather, Paul made use of Plato because his Greek audience understood Plato, and he could use Plato's ideas as tools to help gentile minds understand the truth about our lives in Jesus Christ.

Was he right to do this? Didn't he run the risk of making people think he was legitimizing the many unbiblical ideas Plato had? That's a good question.

Yet, Jesus appears to have done the exact same thing. Jesus makes a puzzling statement in Acts when he interrupts Paul (still "Saul" at that time) on the road to Damascus. He says, "I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks," (Acts 9:5).

"Kick against the pricks" is a phrase used multiple times in Greek plays, including in Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus, and The Bacchae by Euripides. In both cases it has to do with a mortal's stubborn defiance of the deity. In The Bacchae, the mortal Pentheus has the god Dionysus bound (the chains slip off), refusing to believe that he's a god. Dionysus tells Pentheus, "Better to yield (me) prayer and sacrifice than kick against the pricks…" Like Pentheus, Saul was striving to look righteous even while dealing with his own temptations.

Does this reference mean that Jesus himself was anything like the god Dionysus? Of course not. It also does not indicate that Paul would suffer Pentheus' fate of being torn apart by wild women   Yet, "kick against the pricks" would have had instant meaning for Saul of Tarsus with his education in Greek literature. It would also have had meaning to those in the Greek culture to whom Paul told his conversion story.

Tripping Our Brothers: What do we do today? Hunting Easter eggs hardly makes children think of Babylonian fertility goddesses, and there is nothing intrinsically evil in eggs or chocolate rabbits. At the same time, we do have knowledge of the Feasts of Israel, the original celebrations meant to point the way to Christ. How should we behave?

Here is what Paul says on the matter. "I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself: but to him that esteemeth any thing to be unclean, to him it is unclean," (Romans 14:14).

Those who genuinely believe it is wrong to give their children Easter baskets should not do so. Those who are convinced that it's harmless fun, however, should rejoice in their liberty. Paul says about these sorts of things, "Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind," (Romans 14:5).

And yet, we have a responsibility to not cause our brothers to stumble. "But take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumblingblock…" (1 Cor. 8:9, 11).

We should do nothing that could harm our fellow Christians or cause them to do something against their own consciences. We need to do everything we do with the heart of Christ, with love, and not out of pride or selfishness or judgmentalism. After all, the whole point of any Christian celebration is to bring glory to God. Let's make sure every decision we make it focused on that goal. 
(And if we can enjoy some excellent food at the same time, then may God be glorified in that as well!)

PHILOSOPHY: A Powerful Tool to Show the Universe Was Created

Is it possible to demonstrate the Universe had a beginning?

Even before modern science, 

could it be shown the Universe was created 

a finite time ago?

(Part 2)  This is the next argument in our series entitled: "Good Arguments God's Existence".  In this video we will examine the second installment of the Kalam Cosmological Argument.  Here, we will be demonstrating it's quite simple to see the universe had a beginning, by using one of the most simple but fundamental tools available to mankind:  philosophy.  

Though good, clear thinking, medieval muslim theologians like Al Ghazali, demonstrated that it is impossible for the universe to be eternal, based upon the philosophical conclusions he came to when considering counting to and crossing INFINITY.

Put on your thinking caps and absorb these 2 powerful and clear ideas, that show how it is logically impossible for the universe to be eternal, and that it must therefore have had a beginning, a finite time ago in the past.

God bless you all.  Have and Intelligent Faith!

- Pastor J. 

Series - "Icons of Evolution, Haeckel's Embryos, Pt 2"

Last week I posted the topic titled "Haeckel's Embryos". We received a comment stating that I never explained what Ernst Haeckel's theory was. During this post we will be looking at what it was.

Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny
Ontogeny: "the development of an individual from a fertilized ovum to maturity, as contrasted with the development of a group or species ( phylogeny )"

Recapitulate: (verb)

1. to recap (formal)
2. to repeat stages from the evolution of the species during the embryonic period of an animal's life

Phylogeny: (noun) the development over time of a species, genus, or group, as contrasted with the development of an individual ( ontogeny )

Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny, also known as "Biogenetic Law" is not a "Law" of Science at all. It is only a theory.

A theory that was proven wrong many years ago.

At the top of this chart you will see how Haeckel drew each embryo. But at the bottom you will see a real picture of what each embryo really looks like.
Haeckel's Biogenetic Law 
Haeckel's Biogenetic Law maintains that vertebrate embryos pass through stages in which they exhibit adult features of their evolutionary ancestors. In its most famous example, the law teaches that "gill slits"
in vertebrate embryos reveal their common aquatic ancestry. But human embryos do not really have
gills or gill slits: like all vertebrate embryos at one stage in their development, they possess a series of
"pharyngeal pouches," or tiny ridges in the neck region. In fish embryos these actually go on to form
gills, but in other vertebrates they develop into unrelated structures such as the inner ear and parathyroid gland. The embryos of reptiles, birds and mammals never possess gills. 


Their evolutionary ancestorsis false and was already discredited in Darwin's lifetime. Nineteenth-century embryologist Karl Ernst von Baer pointed out that although vertebrate embryos resemble each other at one point in their development, they never resemble the adult of any species, present or past (von Baer 1828; Bowler 1989, p. 129). Prominent 20th-century embryologists have also criticized the Biogenetic Law: In 1922 Walter Garstang wrote that "the basis of this law is demonstrably unsound," and in 1958 Sir Gavin de Beer called it "a mental strait-jacket which has had lamentable effects on biological progress" (Garstang 1922, p. 81; de Beer 1958, p. 172).
 Although vertebrate embryos never resemble the adults of any species, it is true that they pass through an intermediate stage in which some of them superficially resemble each other (Haeckel's first stage). Looking at development from this intermediate stage onward, von Baer concluded that early embryos exhibit features common to the phylum before developing the distinguishing characteristics of classes, genera and species (von Baer 1828). 
Many 20th-century biologists prefer von Baer's interpretation to Haeckel's: Early embryos may not possess ancestral adult structures, but their similarities are interpreted as vestiges of ancestral embryonic features. Since Haeckel's drawings can be used to illustrate von Baer's interpretation as well as Haeckel's, they have survived even though the latter has been discredited. Haeckel's embryos have thus become familiar to generations of biology students. Unfortunately, his drawings misrepresent the facts.


Strive to have an Intelligent Faith!!!

-Nelis

Why do 1.8 million children die every year, often in unreached pagan countries such as India, Burma, Laos? Dirty, infected, unsanitary water.

If you saved just one dollar every three days, 

for just 3 months, 

how much could it accomplish?

What if you could save hundreds of lives,
maybe even an entire village,

if you saved up just $30 once?

Watch this video, and consider if it's worth it to save up just $30 dollars to save the life of and entire village, impact hundreds of lives with the love of Christ, and help spread the Gospel in the most unreached pagan nations on earth.  

I'm going to do it with our Youth Ministry, by having each student bring $1.  Then we'll probably repeat it every couple of months.

Consider the difference it could make..... and think about what you would want people to do for you, if you and your family lived in such a place.  Then watch the video below from "Gospel For Asia"

If interested go to Bio-Sand Water Filters from "Gospel For Asia" .  NOTE:  100% of all these donations go directly to the mission field!

God bless you all!  Have a compassionate, active, and Intelligent Faith!

- Pastor J. 

Atheists Coming Out of the Closet? - The 'Reason Rally' in D.C on March 24th

What is the presence and the status of Atheism 

in America today?

What do Atheists aim to accomplish 

by assembling in Washington D.C.?

Tomorrow, March 24th, will possibly be the largest public gathering of Atheists in history.  Still a vast minority in America at large, and in the US Government, atheists are trying to change all of that.  The purpose of the march seems to be that the atheists want people to know that they too have a political voice, they want to be heard, and there's more of them than non-atheists think.  Even the Grand Pope of Evolutionary-Atheism, Richard Dawkins, will be there himself in DC.  

I would suggest two things in light of tomorrow's "Reason Rally":

1. If there is ever a time to know the great REASONS we have for believing in a personal Creator and the Christian worldview, it is now.
2. Use this rally as a conversation starter with your friends, family, co-workers, etc... and share with them some of the tools we've been sharing with you on IF315 regarding the Christian worldview and faith.

Be a bold, loving witness...... and have and Intelligent Faith!

- Pastor J. 

Ancient Jewish Documents: "Jesus Performed Miracles!"

What does the Jewish Talmud, 

one of the most respected ancient books, 

say concerning the supernatural powers of Christ?

Precisely that question will be the focus of our discussion in this installment of our series "Ancient Non-Christian Historical Evidence For Jesus Of Nazareth".  We will be examining 2 ancient Jewish documents, the Talmud and the Toledoth Jesu, and seeking to glean solid historical information from them concerning Jesus.

Wouldn't it be incredible is a non-Christian historical source attributed miracle working powers to Jesus during His earthly ministry?  Watch and find out for yourself.....

God bless you all!  Have an Intelligent Faith!

- Pastor J. 

Christian Movie Release This Friday: "OCTOBER BABY"

Want to help change the statistic of 1.6 million babies 

being aborted every year in the U.S.?

Want to help your friends and family 

understand the sacredness of every human life?

Then take a group of friends, co-workers, students to go see a new Christian movie coming out this Friday called "October Baby".  Many times we pray for an opportunity to be able to change something, or for the Lord to step in and stop certain evils.  I think that these are God-given opportunities.  Edmund Burke said this: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to stand by and do nothing."  I encourage you to do something with this opportunity.  Go see it; forward this to 10 friends; post it on your Facebook; just do something to make a difference and stand up for Truth. 

Here's a brief synopis of the movie:

"You saw me before I was born." Psalm 139:16 (NLT)

"As the curtain rises, Hannah hesitantly steps onto the stage for her theatrical debut in college. Yet before she can utter her first lines, Hannah—unscripted—collapses in front of the stunned audience.

After countless medical tests, all signs point to one underlying factor: Hannah's difficult birth. This revelation is nothing compared to what she then learns from her parents: she was actually adopted … after a failed abortion attempt.

Bewildered, angered, and confused, Hannah turns for support to Jason, her oldest friend. Encouraged by his adventurous spirit, Hannah joins his group of friends on a Spring Break road trip, embarking on a journey to discover her hidden past … and find hope for her unknown future.

In the midst of her incredible journey, Hannah finds that life can be so much more than what you have planned."

 

The producers of OCTOBER BABY have assigned 10% of the profits of the movie to the Every Life is Beautiful Fund , which will distribute funds to frontline organizations helping women facing crisis pregnancies, life-affirming adoption agencies, and those caring for orphans. 

Have and active, compassionate, and Intelligent Faith!

- Pastor J. 

Series - "Icons of Evolution, Haeckel's Embryos"

Darwin knew that the Cambrian fossil record was a serious problem for his theory. "It seems to me," Darwin wrote in The Origin of Species, "the leading facts in embryology, which are second to none in importance, are explained on the principle of variations in the many descendants from some one ancient progenitor."

Similarities in early embryos not only demonstrate that they are descended from a common ancestor, but also reveal what that ancestor looked like. Darwin considered this "by far the strongest single class of facts in favor of" his theory. Darwin was not an embryologist, so he relied for his evidence on the work of others. One of those was German biologist Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919). Darwin wrote in The Origin of Species that Professor Haeckel "brought his great knowledge and abilities to bear on what he calls phylogeny, or the lines of descent of all organic beings. In drawing up the several series he trusts chiefly to embryological characters."
Haeckel made many drawings, but his most famous were of early vertebrate embryos. Haeckel drew embryos from various classes of vertebrates to show that they are virtually identical in their earliest stages, and become noticeably different only as they develop.

Haeckel's embryos seem to provide such powerful evidence for Darwin's theory that some version of them can be found in almost every modern textbook dealing with evolution. Yet biologists have known for over a century that Haeckel faked his drawings; vertebrate embryos never look as similar as he made them out to be. Furthermore, the stage Haeckel labeled the "first" is actually midway through development; the similarities he exaggerated are preceded by striking differences in earlier stages of development. Although you might never know it from reading biology textbooks, Darwin's "strongest single class of facts" is a classic example of how evidence can be twisted to fit a theory.

Haeckel produced many drawings of vertebrate embryos to illustrate his biogenetic law. The drawings show vertebrate embryos that look very much alike at their earliest stage. In fact, the embryos look too much alike. According to historian Jane Oppenheimer, Haeckel's "hand as an artist altered what he saw with what should have been the eye of a more accurate beholder. He was more than once, often justifiably, accused of scientific falsification, by Wilhelm His and many others." In some cases, Haeckel used the same woodcut to print embryos that were supposedly from different classes. In others, he doctored his drawings to make the embryos appear more alike than they really were. Haeckel's contemporaries repeatedly criticized him for these misrepresentations, and charges of fraud abounded in his lifetime. 

So why is it still in biology text books? Just one more example of how evolution is forced down our throats with so much evidence showing something else. Don't be misled, find the truth for yourself and remember...

Have an Intelligent Faith!!

- Nelis

Who was St. Patrick, really? Are there any good historical sources for him?"

PATRICK, the apostle of Ireland: 

4th century Missionary; Teacher; Evangelist,  and Leader to the Irish people.

We would do well today, to learn about this great man, and be inspired by his example.

Why did Jesus say that He didn't know certain things? Isn't He God?

The answer is found within the meaning of the Greek word "kenosis"

(Part 4 of 4) This is a recent message that I shared on Sunday morning that focuses on the 4 doctrinal truths about Jesus (Christology), that can't be surrendered or watered down if we are to maintain historical orthodoxy concerning Christ. These 4 central truths can be remembered by the acronym THINK:

- Trinity: Jesus is the second Person of the Triune Godhead

- Hypo-static Union: In Christ there is a union of a fully divine a fully human nature

- INcarnation: Jesus took on a normal human body and existence, just like us

- Kenosis: Christ apparently limited His access to His divine powers while on earth

I hope you are blessed and amazed by the incredible love that the Son of God has displayed for us in coming to the earth as He did. Feel free to email me your thoughts at jason@claycup.com. 

As always..... endeavor to have an Intelligent Faith!!

- Pastor J.

Does the "Incarnation" make sense? Could God become a man?

(Part 3 of 4) This is a recent message that I shared on Sunday morning that focuses on the 4 doctrinal truths about Jesus (Christology), that can't be surrendered or watered down if we are to maintain historical orthodoxy concerning Christ. These 4 central truths can be remembered by the acronym THINK:

- Trinity: Jesus is the second Person of the Triune Godhead

- Hypo-static Union: In Christ there is a union of a fully divine a fully human nature

- INcarnation: Jesus took on a normal human body and existence, just like us

- Kenosis: Christ apparently limited His access to His divine powers while on earth

I hope you are blessed and amazed by the incredible love that the Son of God has displayed for us in coming to the earth as He did. Feel free to email me your thoughts at jason@claycup.com. Tune in again for the last installment.

As always..... endeavor to have an Intelligent Faith!!

- Pastor J.

What is the "Trinity"? How is Jesus connected to the Trinity?....

(Part 2 of 4) This is a recent message that I shared on Sunday morning that focuses on the 4 doctrinal truths about Jesus (Christology), that can't be surrendered or watered down if we are to maintain historical orthodoxy concerning Christ. These 4 central truths can be remembered by the acronym THINK:

- Trinity: Jesus is the second Person of the Triune Godhead
- Hypo-static Union: In Christ there is a union of a fully divine a fully human nature
- INcarnation: Jesus took on a normal human body and existence, just like us
- Kenosis: Christ apparently limited His access to His divine powers while on earth

I hope you are blessed and amazed by the incredible love that the Son of God has displayed for us in coming to the earth as He did. Feel free to email me your thoughts at jason@claycup.com. Tune in for the next 2 installments.

- Pastor J.

"What are the essential New Testament truths 

about the Person of Jesus?"

"How can I know if I believe some false doctrine 

concerning the identity of Christ?"

"How can I ensure that I am THINKing correctly 

concerning Jesus?"

(Part 1 of 4) This is a recent message that I shared on Sunday morning that focuses on the 4 doctrinal truths about Jesus (Christology), that can't be surrendered or watered down if we are to maintain historical orthodoxy concerning Christ. These 4 central truths can be remembered by the acronym T.H.IN.K.:

- Trinity:  Jesus is the second Person of the Triune Godhead
- Hypo-static Union:   In Christ there is a union of a fully divine a fully human nature
- INcarnation:   Jesus took on a normal human body and existence, just like us
- Kenosis:    Christ apparently limited His access to His divine powers while on earth

I hope you are blessed and amazed by the incredible love that the Son of God has displayed for us in coming to the earth as He did. 

Feel free to email me your thoughts at jason@claycup.com. Tune in for the next 3 installments.

- Pastor J. 

What happens when you doubt Darwinism?

David Coppedge, a 14-year (Jet Propulsion Lab) JPL veteran and team lead computer administrator on the Cassini Mission to Saturn, was reprimanded and demoted after lending ID-related DVDs to coworkers. By contrast, anti-ID workers at JPL faced no similar restrictions on expressing their views. After Coppedge filed suit to protect his free expression rights, JPL terminated him.
"Evidence shows that taxpayer-funded JPL harassed, demoted and terminated Coppedge after he expressed a pro-ID scientific viewpoint disliked at JPL and wrongly labeled as 'religion' by JPL decision-makers," said Dr. John West, Associate Director of Discovery Institute's Center for Science & Culture.
"Whatever your views on intelligent design, you should be concerned about the pervasive culture of discrimination that appears to exist at this NASA facility," added West.
Last November, a California Superior Court judge ruled there "are triable issues of fact as to whether Plaintiff's demotion, written warning, negative performance evaluations, and ultimate termination were adverse employment actions" which involved discrimination. That ruling allowed the case to proceed to trial.
Coppedge is represented by William J. Becker, Jr. of the Becker Law Firm, who has been supported in the case by Alliance Defense Fund. The case number is BC435600.
Since 2011, the California Science Center, University of Kentucky, and the journal Applied Mathematics Letters each paid settlements ranging from $10,000 to more than $100,000 to avoid trial for suppressing Darwin-doubting viewpoints.
According to West, "Open discussion in science is under growing attack by the Darwin lobby, which wants to impose a gag order on anyone who dares to raise criticisms of Darwin's theory. This kind of persecution and censorship cannot be allowed to prevail in a free society."

Why the Coppedge Trial Matters

David Coppedge's case against his former employer, NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, goes to trial in Los Angeles on Wednesday. This will open yet another window on the culture of free-speech suppression that exists across academic and para-academic institutions.
David Coppedge, it sure looks like, was denied his free expression rights when he accidentally stepped on a land mine: Darwinian evolution. We've documented a variety of other instances where variants of this general scenario have played out: Gonzalez, Sternberg, Sewell, Gaskell. Don't forget the California Science Center affair. In each instance, a loosely organized Darwinian Guild sought to intimidate internal critics and doubters and chill their freedom to write and speak openly. Then courts and lawyers got involved. Emails were disclosed. The facts came out, all properly documented and vetted. Sometimes, significant sums of money were dislodged from Darwinian coffers. Now it's set to happen again, with NASA, JPL and CalTech in the hot seat.
The reason that courts and testimony are important is that they add tangible evidence of a phenomenon that otherwise tries to keep a relatively low profile. The Darwin Guild doesn't advertise its inquisitorial services, though that doesn't make it any less effective in maintaining the illusion of a "consensus" on evolution. Each Sternberg affair, each Gaskell case, each Coppedge trial is like a tile in a mosaic. Considered by itself, it might not tell you very much. But as each tile is added, the picture of how a culture of intimidation actually works gradually emerges, in greater clarity and enhanced vividness.
Most folks in scientific fields, faced with the fear that Darwinists seek to instill, keep quiet about their Darwin doubts. They know where the land mines are buried and so successfully avoid them by staying silent. Then you get a fellow like Coppedge who, for whatever reason, never got the memo and didn't realize the danger in merely sharing a few pro-ID DVDs till he already fell under the threatening shadow of a Human Resources investigation. Before he knew it, he was out of a job.
Someday, enough tiles will have accumulated that any fair-minded person will see the image, without ambiguity. For the Darwin Guild, which needs the public to think that scientists are actually free to reach any conclusion on evolution, that will be an unmitigated disaster.

Stand for the truth and remember...

Have an Intelligent Faith!!!

- Nelis

Series: "The Case for a Creator,THE EVIDENCE OF BIOCHEMISTRY: THE COMPLEXITY OF MOLECULAR MACHINES"

have always underestimated the cell. . . . The entire cell can be viewed as a factory that contains an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each of which is composed of a set of large protein machines. . . . Why do we call [them] machines? Precisely because, like machines invented by humans to deal efficiently with the macroscopic world, these protein assemblies contain highly coordinated moving parts. Bruce Alberts, President, National Academy of Sciences

We should reject, as a matter of principle, the substitution of intelligent design for the dialogue of chance and necessity; but we must concede that there are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biochemical system, only a variety of wishful speculations. Biochemist Franklin M. Harold

If Darwinian evolution is going to work, it has to succeed at the microscopic level of amino acids, proteins, and DNA. On the other hand, if there really was a designer of the world, then his fingerprints were going to be all over the cell. A system or device is irreducibly complex if it has a number of different components that all work together to accomplish the task of the system, and if you were to remove one of the components, the system would no longer function. An irreducibly complex system is highly unlikely to be built piece-by-piece through Darwinian processes, because the system has to be fully present in order for it to function.

Let’s look an example: a mouse trap.

First, there’s a flat wooden platform to which the other parts are attached. Second, there’s a metal hammer, which does the job of crushing the mouse. Third, there’s a spring with extended ends to press against the platform and the hammer when the trap is charged. Fourth, there’s a catch that releases when a mouse applies a slight bit of pressure. And, fifth, there’s a metal bar that connects to the catch and holds the hammer back when the trap is charged. Now, if you take away any of these parts—the spring or the holding bar or whatever—then it’s not like the mousetrap becomes half as efficient as it used to be or it only catches half as many mice. Instead, it doesn’t catch any mice. It’s broken. It doesn’t work at all. And notice that you don’t just need to have these five parts, but they also have to be matched to each other and have the right spatial relationship to each other. The parts are stapled in the right place. An intelligent agent does that for a mousetrap. But in the cell, who tells the parts where they should go? Who staples them together? Nobody—they have to do it on their own. You have to have the information resident in the system to tell the components to get together in the right orientation, otherwise it’s useless.

The mousetrap does a good job of illustrating how irreducibly complex biological systems defy a Darwinian explanation, Evolution can’t produce an irreducibly complex biological machine suddenly, all at once, because it’s much too complicated. The odds against that would be prohibitive. And you can’t produce it directly by numerous, successive, slight modifications of a precursor system, because any precursor system would be missing a part and consequently couldn’t function. There would be no reason for it to exist. And natural selection chooses systems that are already working.

Life is actually based on molecular machines. They haul cargo from one place in the cell to another; they turn cellular switches on and off; they act as pulleys and cables; electrical machines let current flow through nerves; manufacturing machines build other machines; solar-powered machines capture the energy from light and store it in chemicals. Molecular machinery lets cells move, reproduce, and process food. In fact, every part of the cell’s function is controlled by complex, highly calibrated machines. And if the creation of a simple device like this requires intelligent design, then we have to ask, ‘What about the finely tuned machines of the cellular world?’ If evolution can’t adequately explain them, then scientists should be free to consider other alternatives.

So as you can see evolution try to explain how we and everything else got here, but when you look at the molecular level they find it very hard, actually impossible to explain it. Use the mouse trap example. And yes, you can build another mouse trap with fewer parts, you can use a box with a stick and string, but you need all the parts for that trap to work also. If the cell doesn’t have all the parts, it WILL NOT FUNCTION LIKE IT SHOULD.

Research the evidence, ask questions, and remember…..

Have an Intelligent Faith!!

-Nelis

parts taken from Strobel, Lee (2009-05-11). The Case for a Creator: A Journalist Investigates Scientific Evidence That Points Toward God. Zondervan.