Answer: Be the sun and wait 7.6 billion years.

Rather than just posting one article, here are some articles that I’ve found interesting recently.

• Deepak Chopra on Who is Jesus? - “I want to offer the possibility that Jesus was truly, as he proclaimed, a savior,” Chopra wrote. “Not the savior, not the one and only Son of God. Rather Jesus embodied the highest level of enlightenment.” My take: yikes.
• Man arrested for carrying a Koran, Bible, and a box-cutter. My take: certainly this wasn’t the only thing he was carrying, why did we only hear about these books?
• Florida school will teach evolution but only as a theory. My take: evolution is a theory, who argues this one?
• Scientists capture giant antarctic sea creatures. My take: great title, lame creatures.
• African dinosaurs. My take: awesome artwork.
• Applying OT law today. My take: a better take is at Expository Thoughts.
• Avoid every appearance of evil. My Take: I thoroughly enjoy Reclaiming the Mind Ministries.

I think just about everyone else on the web has posted these and I’m about 4 days late in doing so but, that’s ok. Reformissionary has posted some more free Tim Keller sermons, you can find them here. They are related to Dr. Keller’s book, The Reason for God, which is due out on February 14th. For some reason that date is a really easy one to remember and it’s been at the forefront of my mind ever since last year when they announced it.

Here is an interesting article, no, I’ve never heard of the Jamaica Gleaner News either, but the content caught my eye and it’s very informative. The article attempts to show that some big differences between ancient Egyptian religions and Judeo-Christianity prove that Judaism and Christianity did not derive itself from these religions in Egypt.

There has always been discussion of the actual source of the Jewish religion and the Christian religion. This is an obvious question to ask when you look at some of the similarities between different religions. For instance, the Bible teaches that we should love our neighbor as ourselves (Leviticus 19:18), this same principle is also taught in Hinduism. The logic goes, if two religions are similar, one religion must have stemmed from another and hence did not come from God, therefore you can discount that religion since it is just a copy of another one. This argument is then taken further to say that all religions are the same so it doesn’t really matter what you believe, etc.

Actually, when you look at the command that we should love our neighbors as we love ourselves, you will find it in just about every major religion. So, when we look at the similarities and differences in the major religions, there is only one thing we can prove: The human condition is universal. Every human has looked at himself and the world he lived in and realized something was wrong. And every human has tried his best to fix it himself. Has anyone succeeded?

This is exactly what “religion” is. Religion is man’s attempt to fix his relationship with God. As Tim Keller puts it, “religion says I obey and therefore I am accepted by God.” So yes, you will find a lot of similarities when you look at what all the major religions teach, because all of them agree that there is sin and that if you stop people from sinning, things will be better. But what did Christ say? “apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Christianity is the only “religion” that teaches that we are “saved by grace through faith not as a result of works” (Ephesians 2:8-9). “God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). Christ did not come “to call the righteous to faith, but the sinners” (Mark 2:17), this would be you, and me. The difference between Christianity and all other religions is not in how we’re commanded to be good and do good things, the difference is in how we restore our relationship to God. Tim Keller finishes off his statement with, “religion says I obey therefore I am accepted by God. Christianity says I am accepted through Christ therefore I obey.”

If you have an interest in getting a big picture look at the major religions, have a look at this book by Huston Smith.

Here is an article from Discover Magazine on the research of Stanley Miller. Miller’s theory of how life began is, very simply put, that it was formed in very cold conditions contrary to other theories that it began under very hot conditions like those found in volcanoes.

I guess my only comment on this article is that I still don’t understand how scientists can say this is how life began, when it’s not how life began, it’s how living organisms came together. For something to have a beginning, it had to have a period of time when it didn’t exist. According to the big bang theory, all matter has always existed, it was just not in the same form as it is now. So, life never really began, it always was, or so the theory says. OK, you say, so aren’t we just arguing over semantics now? Does it really matter what word we use for all this? I believe it does.

For something to have a beginning, it had to have a catalyst, something to change it from what wasn’t to what was. Some modern-day scientists say that all matter existed in a point of infinite density (singularity) and then, all of a sudden, this built up energy was released (the big bang) and this is where all life comes from. There are two well known questions that still remain unanswered by this theory though. The first is, where did this singularity come from? And the second is, what caused it to explode all of a sudden?

An answer to the first question only leaves you stranded at the second. Some say that singularity has always existed, just as we say God has always existed, there never was a time when singularity did not exist. But if this is the answer, you are still left with the question of why did it explode all of a sudden. This is the issue of cause and effect. Every effect has to have a cause associated with it. If a ball is rolling down the street, something had to make it roll. Either I kicked it or the wind blew it or something happened. If singularity has always existed, what was the cause of the effect of its explosion? What force acted on this point of matter to cause it to explode and begin life as we know it? The question cannot be answered without belief in something other than what is known.

There is an opinion post today in the National Post titled, “Why I am an Abortion Doctor.” Apparently, the piece was written by an abortionist, Garson Romalis, who has been in practice since it was legal to do so, and was delivered on Jan. 25, at the University of Toronto Law School’s Symposium. From the article, Romalis writes:

Let me tell you about an abortion patient I looked after recently. She was 18 years old, and 18-19 weeks pregnant. She came from a very strict, religious family. She was an only daughter, and had several brothers. She was East Indian Hindu and her boyfriend was East Indian Muslim, which did not please her parents. She told me if her parents found out she was pregnant she would be disowned and kicked out of the family home. She also told me that her brothers would murder her boyfriend, and I believed her. About an hour after her operation I and my nurse saw her and her boyfriend walking out of the clinic hand in hand, and I said to my nurse, “Look at that. We saved two lives today.”

The entire article reads in similar fashion. The focus of Romalis’ comments are on the reasons why he does what he does. He describes how women are in desperate times and in need of his services. He looks on the work he does as being a good thing, helping others out in “the worst trouble the patient has ever been in in her entire life.” In one situation, Romalis describes how he had just killed a woman’s unborn child when he received a phone call from her mother. Expecting to hear from the stolen-grandmother about a lawsuit, he was surprised when she said to him, “Thank you, Doctor. Thank God there are people like you around.”

Garson Romalis obviously goes right for the emotion to grab his audience. He bypasses any attempt to justify his actions from a right vs. wrong standpoint and, instead, paints a picture of help and compassion for those who have no where else to turn. Never is the question of whether abortion is murder or not taken into account, the desperation and despair of the woman is the only thought considered in this article.

What I really would like you to see though is the comments on Digg, where I found this article. Have a look here. You will find comments like, ” This helped remind why I don’t want religious fanatics running our country” or “i’ve had scares in my life. thankfully they didn’t amount to anything. but at least i know, if it comes down to the worst case scenario, i can keep my life on track.” I think it’s helpful sometimes to read through these comments, Digg is a huge social network so it is a good way to see what people think about a particular topic. Be prepared for some vulgar language and utter nonsense at times though so please use caution.

A few days ago I posted some information on a recently discovered fossil being called the “missing link” to ancient and modern day crocodiles. Today I found a video of a really odd looking shark found by some fishermen near Japan.

Could it be that these fossils we keep finding aren’t of things that are extinct but are of things that are just difficult to find?

Imagine for a moment that a few thousand years ago the earth was suddenly, within a matter of days, flooded. Creatures in the sea can only survive at their comfortable pressure level. A small fish that hangs out at 10 feet below the surface isn’t going to last very long at 1000 feet because there is more pressure at 1000 feet verses 10 feet.

The Bible says that the tallest mountains were covered during the flood; this could possibly mean that Mt. Everest was covered to its tip in water. So, this would mean that sea level rose 8,850 meters or roughly 29,000 feet! This is a pressure differential of 247 atmospheres at sea level. So, every creature in the sea had to drastically change its habitat within a few days. Either the fish stayed where they knew their food source was and died from the new pressure that all this water caused or they left their habitats and swam upwards where they had to find new sources of food.

This is no small change. The effects that the flood had on this earth are very difficult to spell out. But it is obvious that if an event like this really took place, we would need to drastically rethink how we date fossils based on their sedimentary layer level. The pressure caused by this much of an increase in so short a time are very hard to model and calculate. The earth’s composition and sedimentary layout would have changed significantly if that much weight was suddenly piled upon it. Any thoughts?

Reuters is reporting on a recent finding by paleontologists in Brazil. They are calling it the “missing link” to the modern-day crocodile. The artist renderings are fantastic, all that detail from some old gray bones.

Let me admit here that I am going out on a limb with this one, so I am asking for comments and criticism on what I am about to say.

First of all, those subscribing to the theory of evolution seem to be far past this idea of a “missing link”. Today’s evolutionist believes that life evolved in very, very small steps. There is disagreement as to how bursty these steps were, some say they were gradual and consistent, others say they occurred in bursts with long lengths of time in between. So the idea that they would find one set of remains that would bridge the awkward gap between animals of noticeably different characteristics is, yes I’m going to do it, extinct. A missing link would basically be some kind of half-way point between a species that has gone through thousands of changes, so what kind of evidence would this provide? You’d need to find another missing link between your current species and your newly discovered species, and then another one after that, and so on. Otherwise, you are just finding remains of different looking animals at different periods in time, you need more than a flipper that is larger than previously found flippers.

But this got me thinking. If life started evolving billions of years ago, shouldn’t we have an overabundance of fossils to prove these theories with? I mean, we should be finding this things every time little Billy tries to dig his way to China. It is difficult for something to fossilize, the conditions need to be almost perfect so I can see how our fossil record would be full of so many gaps. Generally, something needs to die and then be preserved before it decomposes for it to be fossilized. So it is difficult, I realize. But, with the sheer numbers evolutionists are talking about, this shouldn’t matter at all. You need a lot of animals to have lived for evolution to have occurred.

Think of how many species there are today. The theory of evolution says that they all came about through micro-changes in physical characteristics. Your newborn boy may be a more evolved human than you are but you would never know it from looking at him. But over time, some of these characteristics prove to be more useful to a species and that characteristic becomes more common, you can almost think of it as survival of the fittest but not really in a my claw is bigger than yours so I’ll get more food and live kind of way. But for this to happen, you need lots and lots of genes to pick from. Even if remains are only preserved during snapshots of history, it seems like there should be a lot more than there are.

Again, I may be stretching things here so I’m looking for some feedback. Thanks!

These past two weeks there has been a lot of news on abortion. I was most excited to read John Ensor’s commentary on the Desiring God blog. He says:

The end of abortion as a business is in sight when the prolife movement is not only joined by, but led by, the African-American and Latino Christian Community. I call it the Third Wave.

So you can see why I was excited at his posting. The article gives a brief summary of how he defines these three waves so have a read to understand more about this.

Here were some more articles in the news:

• Justin Taylor interviews Scott Klusendorf on his upcoming book Pro-Life Christians in the Brave New World. Here is a quick excerpt:
  

  JT: You’ve stated before that many abortion-choice arguments are flawed because they ignores the central philosophical question in the abortion debate: What is the unborn? Can you give us an example of what you mean?

  SK: Certainly. Many well-intentioned people cite rape as a justification for abortion. Aside from the fact that few actual pregnancies result from rape, this argument is a case of using worst-case scenarios and emotion to avoid clear thinking on the matter. That is to say, while the rape objection has rhetorical force, it misses the key moral question: How should we treat innocent human beings that remind us of a painful event? Is it okay to kill them so that we can feel better? True, pro-life advocates must do all they can to lovingly care for victims of sexual assault, but if the unborn are human, hardship does not justify homicide.

• Another interview from Justin Taylor. This time he speaks with Robert P. George on the Roe v. Wade decision.
• This video has been on YouTube for a long time. It very graphically shows the results of aborted children at various stages of pregnancy. I hesitate to even post it due to its very graphic nature, but this is reality and it happens to more than 0 children a year so it must stop.
• Denny Burk posts on Sanctity of Life Sunday.
• The Washington Post has an article on the recent pro-life rally in DC and how encouraged protesters were that abortion rates fell to the lowest they have ever been in the past thirty years.
• Here is a post from the Evangelical Outpost on comparing slavery with abortion.

Please join me in praying for those who are considering abortion as an option and those struggling from regret from their past decisions, please join me in praying for changed hearts.

An article recently appeared in Time titled, “My Nose, My Brain, My Faith“. The article mentions some research being done with the attempt of showing that faith may be reasoned within the mind in the same way certain statements cause us to react either positively or negatively when we hear them or certain smells cause us to react in a certain way when we smell them. So, when we hear the statement “torture is good” there is a certain part of our brain that reacts negatively and the statement “2+2=4″ causes a different part of the brain to react positively. The part of our brain that reacts negatively “helps process fear, disgust and reactions to bad smells,” while the part of our brain that reacts positively “is thought to play a role in judgment, memory, fear and, according to one study, soft-drink preferences.”

The researcher admits that his study cannot prove or disprove the existence of God but it may be able to show that faith is simply a matter of preference. They are setting out to show that when we hear the statement “God is dead” it is not the judgment area of our brain that reacts, but it is rather the preference area that reacts. In other words, we don’t really believe the statement is true or false, we simply don’t like the way it sounds, it leaves a bad taste in our mouths.

I am still working out my thoughts on this but it is kind of interesting. If this research proves to be true, that our brains do actually process faith as a sense rather than as a true/false judgment, would this be such a bad thing? Certainly one could make the argument that if our faith is just simply a feeling and not something we believe is true then faith is not something absolutely true but it is more of a preference. “You can have your faith in God and I can have mine in myself, just like you prefer hamburgers and I prefer chicken.” From this argument you would then have to say that morals are a matter of preference, “you believe torture is wrong, I believe it is ok,” and now you are knee-deep in postmodern thought and reasoning. But this seems to be a stretch, just by showing that one area of the brain is reacting to preference you haven’t shown that it is the only area reacting. In other words, just by proving that something isn’t an apple you don’t necessarily prove it to be an orange. Also, the next step in research would have to set out to show why this particular area of the brain reacts to preference. Why is it that we like or dislike chocolate, why is it that we believe it’s wrong to steal from the elderly?

Interesting things to think about. The Word tells us that faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ (Romans 10:17). It doesn’t seem to be something we can measure with an MRI…