You're a Good Mom

Saw this online, posted by Jenn Adams:

To the mom who's breastfeeding: Way to go! It really is an amazing gift to give your baby, for any amount of time that you can manage! You're a good mom.

To the mom who's formula feeding: Isn't science amazing? To think there was a time when a baby with a mother who couldn't produce enough would suffer, but now? Better living through chemistry! You're a good mom.

To the cloth diapering mom: Fluffy bums are the cutest, and so friendly on the bank account. You're a good mom.

To the disposable diapering mom: Damn those things hold a lot, and it's excellent to not worry about leakage and laundry! You're a good mom.

To the mom who stays home: I can imagine it isn't easy doing what you do, but to spend those precious years with your babies must be amazing. You're a good mom.

To the mom who works: It's wonderful that you're sticking to your career, you're a positive role model for your children in so many ways, it's fantastic. You're a good mom.

To the mom who had to feed her kids from the drive thru all week because you're too worn out to cook or go grocery shopping: You're feeding your kids, and hey, I bet they aren't complaining! Sometimes sanity can indeed be found in a red box with a big yellow M on it. You're a good mom.

To the mom who gave her kids a homecooked breakfast lunch and dinner for the past week: Excellent! Good nutrition is important, and they're learning to enjoy healthy foods at an early age, a boon for the rest of their lives. You're a good mom.

To the mom with the kids who are sitting quietly and using their manners in the fancy restaurant: Kudos, it takes a lot to maintain order with children in a place where they can't run around. You're a good mom.

To the mom with the toddler having a meltdown in the cereal aisle: they always seem to pick the most embarrassing places to lose their minds don't they? We've all been through it. You're a good mom.

To the moms who judge other moms for ANY of the above? Glass houses, friend. Glass houses.

God's Final Word, Understanding Revelation Author: Ray C. Stedman

I read this book recently and really enjoyed it. Here is a review from here: http://awell-wateredgarden.blogspot.com/2013/01/review-gods-final-word-understanding.html

Review: God's Final Word, Understanding Revelation by Ray C. Stedman

Title: God's Final Word, Understanding Revelation
Author: Ray C. Stedman
Publisher: Originally published 1991/Discovery House Publishers 2012
Genre: Non-Fiction
Labels: New Testament, Revelation, Bible, Bible Commentary
Format: Paperback
Age: Adult
Pages: 384
Rating: 5 Stars


Revelation is a book in the Bible that is often misunderstood and or ignored. A casual reader of the Bible will read through the book, not stopping to try and understand it. It's treated as if it's something to be feared, rather than studied and embraced.

Ray C. Stedman explains Revelation in terms that are easy to understand.
Some of these topics are:

• The letters to the seven churches. 
• The various horsemen. 
• Angels and other created beings. 
• God's judgment.
• The meaning behind the symbols.
• The seals that are opened.
• God's Word that stands alone.
• The Holy City.

After reading God's Final Word, Understanding Revelation, there are two things that stand out to me.

1. Revelation is a book of hope. I live in a world that is steadily becoming more violent. People are eager to find a way to protect human life, albeit with other innocent life they call that (a choice). It's a mixed-up world, and I feel as if I don't belong in this world. That feeling of not feeling as if I don't belong here is because I don't, I'm a child of God, and someday he will call me to my true home, which is with Him in heaven. Revelation is a book of hope, because at some point God will say enough. Enough of the selfishness, greed, hatred, strife, war, murder, arguments, pride, arrogance, vengeance, and apathy, that has continued to morph and fester until it's hard to imagine it could get any worse. Revelation gives me hope that someday all these things will pass away, they "will grow strangely dim", and will be forgotten by us.
2. Revelation is a book of judgment. Ray C. Stedman calls our age, an age of grace. "God's dealings with mankind enter a new phase. At the end of human history God at last turns from grace to judgment." page 128. Throughout the Bible we are shown God's grace, especially in the New Testament. But there will come a time when God will "turn from grace to judgment." For those who are unbeliever's this judgment will fall on them and crush them, for those who've accepted by faith Jesus as God's Son and believe in His Gospel message, they will be saved. Talking about God's judgment is not something people take kindly to. Human nature is rebellious and defiant. People want to be the master of their own life. There will come a time when all mouths will cease spewing out what they will or will not do, and our Holy God will say "enough".

Thank you to Discovery House Publishers and Ray C. Stedman for my free review copy in exchange for an honest review.

Snow in Jerusalem

Lesson on snow in the Bible by Dr. Wright from Jerusalem University College:

Jerusalem - 4000 years in 5 Minutes

Does an Evolutionary Worldview Equal Science?

from here

Is Science Secular?

by Bodie Hodge, AiG–U.S.

May 17, 2013

Many people today insist that science can only be done by people who have a secular worldview—or at least by those who are willing to leave their religious views at the door as they enter the science lab. Several popular atheists and evolutionists have contended that people who reject the big bang and the evolution of living things are so backward that they cannot even be involved in developing new technologies.¹ But is this really the case, or are these opponents of a biblical worldview simply making assertions that cannot be supported with facts and substantial arguments, having an incorrect understanding of true science?
A friend of the ministry was recently challenged by the comment that science can only be done through a purely secular evolutionary framework. We have decided to publish a response for the sake of teaching. Such statements are blatantly absurd and are a type of arbitrary fallacy called an “ignorant conjecture.” In other words, these people simply do not know the past, nor are they familiar with what science really is.

Examples of Scientists Operating from a Christian Worldview

If science is a strictly secular endeavor without any need for a biblical worldview, then why were most fields of science developed by Bible-believing Christians? For example, consider Isaac Newton, Gregor Mendel, Louis Pasteur, Johann Kepler, Galileo Galilei, Robert Boyle, Blaise Pascal, Michael Faraday, James Joule, Joseph Lister, and James Clerk Maxwell. Were these “greats” of science not doing science? Francis Bacon developed the scientific method, and he was a young-earth creationist and devout Christian.
Even in modern times, the inventor of the MRI scanning machine, Dr. Raymond Damadian, is a Christian working with Christian principles. The founder of catastrophic plate tectonics, Dr. John Baumgardner,is also a devout Christian. And those who recently founded the scientific field of baraminology are also Christians. Also, I (Bodie Hodge) developed a new method for production of submicron titanium diboride for the materials science and ceramics industry. Professor Stuart Burgess developed a new mechanism for the two-billion-dollar European (ESA) satellite Envisat. Dr. John Sanford developed the gene gun. And let’s not forget Werner Von Braun, the young-earth Christian who was the founder of rocket science and led the U.S. to the moon. These are but a few examples of people who held to a biblical worldview and were quite capable as scientists and inventors of new technologies.

The Foundation for Science Is Biblical Christianity

Furthermore, science comes out of a Christian worldview. Only the God described in the Bible can account for a logical and orderly universe. God upholds the universe in a particular way, such that we can study it by observational and repeatable experimentation (see Genesis 8:22). Because God upholds the universe in a consistent manner, we have a valid reason to expect that we can study the world we live in and describe the laws that God uses to sustain the universe (Colossians 1:17).
In the secular view, where all matter originated by chance from nothing, there is no ultimate cause or reason for anything that happens, and explanations are constantly changing, so there is no basis for science. Though many non-Christians do science, like inventing new technologies or improving medical science, they are doing it in a manner that is inconsistent with their professed worldview. On what basis should we expect a universe that came from nothing and for no reason to act in a predictable and consistent manner? When non-Christians do real science by observable and repeatable experimentation, they are actually assuming a biblical worldview, even if they do not realize it.
It makes sense why “science” in the U.S. is losing out to other nations since our science education system now limits science in the classroom exclusively to the religion of secular humanism.

It Is Not “Science vs. Religion”

So, the debate is not “science versus religion.” It is really “religion versus religion.” Sadly, science is caught up in the middle.
The battle is between the religion of secular humanism (with its variant forms like agnosticism, atheism, and the like), which is usually called secularism or humanism for short, and Christianity. They both have religious documents (e.g., the Humanist Manifestos I, II, and III for humanists, and the Bible for Christians); both are recognized religions by the Supreme Court;² and both receive the same 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. Both have different views of origins.
Humanism has astronomical evolution (big bang), geological evolution (millions of years of slow gradual changes), chemical evolution (life came from non-life) and biological evolution (original, single-celled life evolved into all life forms we have today over billions of years) in its view of origins. In other words, evolution (as a whole) is a subset of the dogma of the religion of humanism in the same way as biblical creation (as a whole, with six-day Creation, the Fall, global Flood, and the Tower of Babel) is a subset of the dogma of Christianity. It is a battle over two different religions.
In recent times the state and federal governments kicked Christianity out of the classroom, thinking they kicked religion out; but instead, they just replaced Christianity with a godless religion of humanism. This was done as a designed attack by humanists. Consider this quote in the magazine The Humanist that outlines the plan they had been already been striving toward in the early 1980s:

I am convinced that the battle for humankind’s future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith: a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects the spark of what theologians call divinity in every human being. These teachers must embody the same selfless dedication as the most rabid fundamentalist preachers, for they will be ministers of another sort, utilizing a classroom instead of a pulpit to convey humanist values in whatever subject they teach, regardless of the educational level—preschool day care or large state university. The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new—the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with all its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of humanism.³

An Evolutionary Worldview Equals Science?

There is a misconception that this evolutionary subset of humanism is science. Science means knowledge and scientific methodology that is based on the scientific method (observable and repeatable experimentation). However, evolution (whether chemical, biological, astronomical, or geological) is far from scientific. Consider the following facts:

1. No one has been able to observe or repeat the making of life from non-life (matter giving rise to life or chemical evolution).
2. No one has been able to observe or repeat the changing of a single-celled life-form like an amoeba into a cow or goat over billions of years (biological evolution).
3. No one has been able to observe or repeat the big bang (astronomical evolution).
4. No one has observed millions of years of time progressing in geological layers (geological evolution).

The reason some people are confused about the religion of humanism—and specifically its subset of evolution—as being science is a bait and switch fallacy. Let me explain. One of the key components of humanism is naturalism. Basically, it assumes a priori there is nothing supernatural and no God. In other words, nature (i.e., matter) is all that exists in their religion (only the physical world).
As a clarifying note, Christians also believe in the natural realm; but unlike the naturalist or humanist, we believe in the supernatural realm, too (i.e., the spiritual, abstract, conceptual, and immaterial realm). Logic, truth, integrity, concepts, thought, God, etc., are not material and have no mass; so those holding to naturalism as a worldview must reject logic, truth, and all immaterial concepts if they wish to be consistent since these are not material or physical parts of nature.
This is very important because naturalism or natural science has been added as one of the dictionary definitions of science. For example, it was not found in the 1828 Webster’s dictionary, but it was added in one form in the 1913 edition. And, interestingly, they removed the definition that “the science of God must be perfect” in the 1913 edition.
So, although many appeal to observable and repeatable science through methodology to understand how the universe operates, another definition has been added to muddle this.⁴ Science is now defined as “knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method.”⁵
For example, evolutionists have continued to popularize Darwin’s scientific observation of the changes in beaks of Galapagos finches as proof for the evolution of one animal kind into another. This is a great example of the bait and switch fallacy where scientists present real scientific evidence (the difference in finch beaks) but stretch the truth to say it gives validity to the Greek mythology of microbes to man evolution (the “switch” part of the fallacy). This trick leads many to believe that evolution is real science. The only real science in this example is the observation of the difference in finch beaks.
People are baited with this good methodology of science (again developed by a Christian named Francis Bacon) and then they are told that evolution is science while subtly appealing to another added definition: that of “natural science” or “naturalism.”
This is like saying another definition of science is “Nazism.” Then Nazis could say they are “scientists” and get into a classroom! This is what has happened with humanism. The religion of humanism (with its founding principle of naturalism) has been disguised as science by adding another definition to the word science. But it is not the good science we think of that makes computers, space shuttles, and cars. It is a religion. To call evolution science is a bait and switch tactic.

So, Is Science Strictly Secular?

No. In summary, science can never be strictly secular for these reasons:

• Real science is observable and repeatable experimentation that only makes sense in a biblical worldview where God’s power keeps the laws of nature consistent. In other words, science proceeds from a biblical worldview.
• Secular humanism, with its subset of evolution, is in reality a religion and not science.
• Many of the greatest scientists were Bible-believing Christians whose biblical worldview motivated their scientific studies, showing that a strictly secular view is not necessary for performing science.

Final Note: Where Humanism Leads

Christians will continue to conduct scientific inquiry and invent things, processes, and science fields as we always have. If the U.S. and other places neglect our accomplishments and inventions and continue to push the religion of humanism on unsuspecting kids in the classroom (usually unbeknownst to most) by limiting its definition of science to the humanistic worldview, then my humble suggestion is that they will continue down the same road where humanism leads. That is, people who are consistent in their naturalistic worldview shouldn’t care about true science or the world, since nothing ultimately matters in that worldview.

Help keep these daily articles coming. Support AiG.

Footnotes

1. As an example of this dismissive attitude, Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), a leading religious humanist, says, “Like other pseudosciences, ‘creation science’ seeks support and adherents by claiming the mantle of science.” (http://ncse.com/rncse/23/1/my-favorite-pseudoscience) Back
2. The U.S. Supreme Court in Torcaso v. Watkins, 81 S.Ct. 1681 (1961), stated the following: “Among religions in this country which do not teach what would generally be considered a belief in the existence of God, are Buddhism, Taoism, Ethical Culture, Secular Humanism, and others.” Back
3. J. Dunphy, “A Religion for a New Age,” The Humanist, January–February 1983, p. 23, 26. Back
4. There is also the issue of operational science versus historical science. For more, see http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/ee/what-is-science. Back
5. Merriam-Webster Online, s.v. “science,” http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/science (accessed March 8, 2013). Back

Creation in the New Testament

by Lita Cosner

Leaving Your Brain at the Church Door?

Leaving your Brain at the Church Door? by Dr. Jonathan Safarti

The Christian Roots of Science

The Christian Roots of Science by Dr. Jonathan Sarfati:


One, of many interesting points addressed in the book (including flat earth, the church and Galileo, etc.) is this:

 Leading anti-creationist philosopher (Michael Ruse) admits that evolution is a religion

‘Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion—a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit that in this one complaint—and Mr [sic] Gish is but one of many to make it—the literalists are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today.
‘… Evolution therefore came into being as a kind of secular ideology, an explicit substitute for Christianity.’

Michael Ruse was professor of philosophy and zoology at the University of Guelph, Canada (recently moved to Florida), He was the leading anti-creationist philosopher whose (flawed) arguments seemed to convince the biased judge to rule against the Arkansas ‘balanced treatment’ (of creation and evolution in schools) bill in 1981/2. At the trial, he and the other the anti-creationists loftily dismissed the claim that evolution was an anti-god religion.


Also a great article here: http://creation.com/biblical-roots-of-modern-science

The biblical roots of modern science

A Christian world view, and in particular a plain understanding of Scripture and Adam’s Fall, was essential for the rise of modern science.

by Jonathan Sarfati

Published: 29 September 2009(GMT+10)

This is the pre-publication version which was subsequently revised to appear in Creation 32(4):32–36.

Portrait by Godfrey Kneller, Wikipedia.org

Sir Isaac Newton (1643–1727)

Many atheopaths¹ and their compromising churchian allies claim that biblical belief and science are mortal enemies. Yet historians of science, even non-Christians, have pointed out that modern science first flourished under a Christian world view while it was stillborn in other cultures such as ancient Greece, China and Arabia. The historical basis of modern science depended on the assumption that the universe was made by a rational Creator. An orderly universe makes perfect sense only if it were made by an orderly Creator (cf. 1 Corinthians 14:33). For example, evolutionary anthropologist and science writer Loren Eiseley stated:

‘The philosophy of experimental science … began its discoveries and made use of its methods in the faith, not the knowledge, that it was dealing with a rational universe controlled by a creator who did not act upon whim nor interfere with the forces He had set in operation… It is surely one of the curious paradoxes of history that science, which professionally has little to do with faith, owes its origins to an act of faith that the universe can be rationally interpreted, and that science today is sustained by that assumption.’²

But if atheism or polytheism is true, then there is no way to deduce from these belief systems that the universe is (or should be) orderly.

Furthermore, Genesis 1:28 gives us permission to investigate creation, unlike say animism or pantheism which teach that the creation itself is divine. And since God is sovereign, He was free to create as He pleased. So where the Bible is silent, the only way to find out how His creation works is to experiment, rather than to rely on man-made philosophies, as did the ancient Greeks. So no wonder that sociologist and author Rodney Stark affirmed:

“Science was not the work of western secularists or even deists; it was entirely the work of devout believers in an active, conscious, creator God.”³

Furthermore, science requires that we can think rationally, and that results should be reported honestly, more teachings found in the Bible but do not follow from evolutionism.⁴

Science in the Middle Ages

While this period used to be called the “Dark Ages”, responsible historians recognize that it was far from dark. Rather, it was a period of great scientific advances, stemming from the logical thought patterns of the medieval Scholastic philosophers of the Church, and the extensive inventiveness and mechanical ingenuity developed in the monasteries. Small wonder that this period saw the development of water and wind power, spectacles, magnificent architecture, the blast furnace, and the stirrup.⁵

An enormous advance in physical understanding was 14th-century logician John Buridan’s development of the concept of impetus, essentially the same as the modern concept of momentum. Previously, Aristotle’s followers argued that a moving object required a force to keep it moving, but Buridan proposed:

“…after leaving the arm of the thrower, the projectile would be moved by an impetus given to it by the thrower and would continue to be moved as long as the impetus remained stronger than the resistance, and would be of infinite duration were it not diminished and corrupted by a contrary force resisting it or by something inclining it to a contrary motion.”

This is a forerunner of Isaac Newton’s First Law of Motion.
So it’s not surprising that James Hannam, who recently earned a Ph.D. on the History of Science from the University of Cambridge, UK, pointed out:

“During the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church actively supported a great deal of science, which it also kept control of when speculation could impinge on theology. Furthermore and contrary to popular belief, the Church never supported the idea that the earth was flat, never banned human dissection, never banned zero and certainly never burnt anyone at the stake for scientific ideas.”
“Popular opinion, journalistic cliché and misinformed historians notwithstanding, recent research has shown that the Middle Ages were a period of enormous advances in science, technology and culture. The compass, paper, printing, stirrups and gunpowder all appeared in Western Europe between AD 500 and AD 1500.”⁶

Scientific jump after the Reformation

While Europe in the Middle Ages had a Judeo-Christian world view, it took the Reformation to recover specific biblical authority. With this came the recovery of a plain or historical grammatical understanding of the Bible, recovering the understanding of the New Testament authors and most of the early Church Fathers. This turned out to have a huge positive impact on the development of modern science. This is so counter to common (mis)understanding, yet it is well documented by Peter Harrison, then a professor of history and philosophy at Bond University in Queensland, Australia (and now Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion at the University of Oxford):

“It is commonly supposed that when in the early modern period individuals began to look at the world in a different way, they could no longer believe what they read in the Bible. In this book I shall suggest that the reverse is the case: that when in the sixteenth century people began to read the Bible in a different way, they found themselves forced to jettison traditional conceptions of the world.”⁷

As Prof. Harrison explained:

“Strange as it may seem, the Bible played a positive role in the development of science. …

Had it not been for the rise of the literal interpretation of the Bible and the subsequent appropriation of biblical narratives by early modern scientists, modern science may not have arisen at all. In sum, the Bible and its literal interpretation have played a vital role in the development of Western science.”⁸

Stephen Snobelen, Assistant Professor of History of Science and Technology, University of King’s College, Halifax, Canada, writes in a similar vein, and also explains the somewhat misleading term “literal interpretation”:

“Here is a final paradox. Recent work on early modern science has demonstrated a direct (and positive) relationship between the resurgence of the Hebraic, literal exegesis of the Bible in the Protestant Reformation, and the rise of the empirical method in modern science. I’m not referring to wooden literalism, but the sophisticated literal-historical hermeneutics that Martin Luther and others (including Newton) championed.”⁹

And Prof. Snobelen explains the reason why: scientists started to study nature in the same way they studied the Bible. I.e. just as they studied what the Bible really said, rather than imposed outside philosophies and traditions upon it, they likewise studied how nature really did work, rather than accept philosophical ideas about how it should work (extending their allegorizing readings of Scripture to the natural world⁸).

“It was, in part, when this method was transferred to science, when students of nature moved on from studying nature as symbols, allegories and metaphors to observing nature directly in an inductive and empirical way, that modern science was born. In this, Newton also played a pivotal role. As strange as it may sound, science will forever be in the debt of millenarians and biblical literalists.”⁹

Belief in the Fall of Adam: how it inspired science

Image Wikipedia.org

Francis Bacon (1561–1626)

Prof. Harrison has researched another commonly overlooked factor in the development of science: belief in a literal Fall of a literal first man Adam. These founding modern scientists, including Francis Bacon, reasoned that the Fall not only destroyed man’s innocence, but also greatly impaired his knowledge. The first problem was remedied by the innocent Last Adam, Jesus Christ—His sacrifice enabled our sin to be imputed (credited) to Him (Isaiah 53:6), and His perfect life enabled His righteousness to be imputed to believers in Him (2 Corinthians 5:21). But as for recovering what they believed to be Adam’s encyclopedic knowledge, they looked to science. Harrison explains:

“New [sic] literal readings of the creation narratives in Genesis provided 17th century thinkers with powerful motivating images for pursuing the natural sciences.

“Adam was thought to have possessed a perfect knowledge of all sciences, a knowledge lost to posterity when he fell from grace and was expelled from the Garden of Eden. The goal of 17^th century scientists such as Francis Bacon and his successors in the Royal Society of London was to regain the scientific knowledge of the first man. Indeed, for these individuals, the whole scientific enterprise was an integral part of a redemptive enterprise that, along with the Christian religion, was to help restore the original race to its original perfection. The biblical account of the creation thus provided these scientists with an important source of motivation, and in an age still thoroughly committed to traditional Christianity, the new science was to gain social legitimacy on account of these religious associations.”⁸

“For many champions of the new learning in the seventeenth century, the encyclopaedic knowledge of Adam was the benchmark against which their own aspirations were gauged. …

“The experimental approach, I shall argue, was deeply indebted to Augustinian views about the limitations of human knowledge in the wake of the Fall, and thus inductive experimentalism can also lay claim to a filial relationship with the tradition of Augustinianism.”¹⁰

Objection

Some atheopaths admit that science was in effect a child of Christianity, but now claim that it’s time science grew up and cut the apron strings. However, none other than former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher answered that type of claim:

“I think back to many discussions in my early life when we all agreed that if you try to take the fruits of Christianity without its roots, the fruits will wither. And they will not come again unless you nurture the roots.

“But we must not profess the Christian faith and go to Church simply because we want social reforms and benefits or a better standard of behaviour; but because we accept the sanctity of life, the responsibility that comes with freedom and the supreme sacrifice of Christ expressed so well in the hymn:

“‘When I survey the wondrous Cross, On which the Prince of glory died, My richest gain I count but loss, And pour contempt on all my pride.’”¹¹

Summary

• Atheopaths often disparage the Bible, especially its account of creation. Yet …
• Science requires certain presuppositions to work at all, and these are found in the Bible.
• Europe in the Middle Ages, with its general Christian world view, advanced greatly in science and technology.
• The Reformation, with its emphasis on the authority of Scripture and a historical-grammatical understanding, led to a great leap forward in science as such methods were carried over into the study of nature.
• Belief in a literal first man Adam and his Fall inspired science as a means to rediscover knowledge Adam had before the Fall.
• It is futile to expect continued fruits of the scientific enterprise while undermining the roots in biblical Christianity.

Aliens, UFOs and The Bible

Recently watched this video - thought it was very good and so timely!

The importance of discernment and clear thinking

from here: http://4simpsons.wordpress.com/2013/05/09/the-importance-of-discernment-and-clear-thinking/
Ann Coulter makes some excellent points in Beware of Liberals Who Come in Evangelicals’ Clothing:

Any Evangelical promoting the McCain-Rubio amnesty plan has the moral framework of Planned Parenthood. Like the abortion lobby, they have boundless compassion for the people they can see, but none for those they can’t see.
One Evangelical after another told the Times that they no longer believe Americans should have control over who immigrates here on the basis of having met illegal aliens in their pews. The millions harmed by illegal immigration are left out of the equation. They don’t go to church here.
Similarly, the pro-choice crowd is brimming with compassion for girls who have gotten pregnant by accident. They’re in high school, their whole lives are ahead of them, it’s one mistake! The babies don’t count because they’re out of sight.
The Rev. David Uth, head pastor of First Baptist Orlando, said that based on “the stories out there in the pews” from illegals who “have made friends and who have become close with people here,” there was momentum in his church to “do something to address their needs.”
Mr. Uth and his parishioners will never hear stories from the thousands of Americans killed every year by illegal aliens. They won’t be sitting in the pews with those murdered and maimed in Boston last month by a conspiracy of immigrants.
They won’t hear from hospitals and school systems in border states forced into bankruptcy because they have to provide free services to illegals. They won’t chat with farmers and ranchers whose livestock and property are stolen or destroyed by illegal aliens.

It is sad to see people make un-principled decisions just because they feel sorry for someone they know.  I’ve seen countless people switch positions to directly oppose the Bible just because they know someone who is gay and they want them to be “happy.”  Or they become pro-choice because they feel sorry for a pregnant teen.  Or they oppose immigration laws because they know an illegal alien.  It is such a sad case of abandoning critical thinking skills and not thinking about the other victims and about what God says.  As Christians we should be mature, clear thinkers and not let emotions lead us to take immoral positions on these issues.

The totalitarian intolerance of the New Atheists

from here: http://creation.com/intolerance-of-new-atheists
A review of The Rage Against God by Peter Hitchens
Continuum International Publishing Group, London, 2010

Reviewed by Dominic Statham

 

 

Peter Hitchens is the brother of the prominent atheist Christopher Hitchens. He is an award-winning columnist and author, and currently writes for the British newspaper, The Mail on Sunday. Unlike his brother, Peter professes a Christian faith. Although he would not describe himself as a biblical fundamentalist, and would not argue for a literal interpretation of Genesis, he is a confirmed member of the Church of England and a strong supporter of Christian values and Christian morality. He has, however, not always been sympathetic to Christianity. In fact, as a teenager, he had rejected the Christian beliefs with which he had been raised as a child—even to the point of publicly burning a Bible—and joined the generation who were ‘too clever to believe’. He embraced ‘the faith of the faithless age’, that science could explain everything we needed to know without reference to God. So vehemently had he turned away from God that he was almost physically disgusted by those who believed (p. 74).

In his book, Peter describes his journey from atheism to faith and refutes three of the common arguments presented by atheists—that conflicts fought in the name of religion are really about religion; that it is possible to know right from wrong without acknowledging the existence of God; and that the failed atheist states like the Soviet Union were not truly atheist. In the final chapters he warns of the totalitarian intolerance of the New Atheists, their determination to drive out the remaining traces of Christianity from the laws and constitutions of Europe and North America, and their desire even to wrest from parents their freedom to raise children in a religious faith.

The fruit of atheism

Peter wrote that his own views changed slowly, as he came to see the fruit of atheism. Part of this realisation came when he was working as a journalist in Moscow, during the final years of the Soviet Union. His depiction of this godless society was sobering. He wrote of the riots that broke out when the vodka ration was cancelled one week; the bribes required to obtain anaesthetics at the dentist or antibiotics at the hospital; the frightening levels of divorce and abortion; the mistrust and surveillance; the unending official lies, manipulation and oppression; the squalor, desperation and harsh incivility. Peter wrote of how traffic stopped dead in Moscow when rain began to fall, as every driver fetched wind-screen wipers from their hiding places and quickly fitted them to their holders. Any wipers left in place when cars were parked were stolen as a matter of course.

The atheist, humanistic ideology of the state, he believed, had even affected the Russian language. Peter spoke to a descendant of an exile, whose grandparents had fled Moscow in the days of Lenin. Having been brought up to speak pure Russian in his American home—the elegant, literary language of his parents— he was shocked when he visited Russia to hear the coarse, ugly, slang-infested and bureaucratic tongue that was now spoken, even by educated professionals.
Peter also wrote of what he saw as the growing public discourtesy and incivility in Britain. When he returned to London, after a five-year absence, he was shocked by the decline in people’s behaviour. He commented,

“The rapid vanishing of Christianity from public consciousness and life, as the last fully Christian generation ages and disappears, seems to me to be a major part of it. I do not think I would have been half so shocked by the squalor and rudeness of 1990 Moscow, if I had not come from a country where Christian forbearance was still well-established. If I had then been able to see the London of 2010, I would have been equally shocked” (p. 66).

In many respects, Peter’s book is a warning to people, as to the kind of society they can expect if they continue to reject Christian beliefs.
Perhaps an even starker warning of the desolation into which a civilised society can rapidly descend came to him when he visited the Somali capital Mogadishu in 1992 (figure 1). This had once been a city of smart cars, Italian-style pavement cafés, white-gloved policemen and modern shops. But, following a civil war which had begun a year prior to his visit, this once prosperous metropolis had been transformed. There were now no trees, no shop fronts and no windows. Children were dying in stinking huts. Pick-up trucks, belonging to lawless militias, lined the streets, each with a machine gun mounted on it. The city still functioned, but in a barbaric way, run by clans, each controlling its own little territory—a land without a government. Peter wrote,

“When you have seen a place from which the whole apparatus of trust, civility and peace has been stripped, you are conscious as never before of the value of these things” (p. 71).

Three failed arguments

Chapter 9 is entitled, “Are conflicts fought in the name of religion conflicts about religion?” As we all know, a favourite mantra of the atheists is that religion is, of itself, a cause of conflict and must, therefore, be inherently wrong. Peter responds that this is a crude and factual misunderstanding. While he agrees that some wars are about religion, many which are claimed to be are not. Moreover, he notes that those who blame religion for wars tend to do so only when it suits them. Most atheists, he says, are supporters of the political left and some wars which are caused by religion are sustained by factions with whom the left sympathise. The evidently religious nature of the Islamic war against the secular state of Israel, for example, is forgotten as the Arab coalition against Israel is regarded by the left as being in opposition to colonialism and therefore ‘progressive’. In their claim that religion causes wars, their real target is Christianity and the real beneficiary of their anti-Christian rants will be Islam, which remains totally uncowed by the New Atheism, and singularly unimpressed by Western wealth and military power (pp. 97, 98).
Chapter 10 is entitled, “Is it possible to determine what is right and what is wrong without God?” Peter responds unequivocally in the negative. An absolute moral code, he asserts, must be beyond human power to alter. Only God-given laws will stand above brute force and the belief, often embraced by totalitarians, that the strongest (or fittest) is always right. Only these limit the power of Kings and give rise to safeguards such as Magna Carta, Habeas Corpus and the Bill of Rights.
Chapter 11 is entitled, “Are atheist states not actually atheist?” in which Peter responds to his brother’s argument that Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union was in fact a religious state, which explains, in his view, its failure to deliver the potential utopia made possible by true atheism. From his own experiences of living in Soviet Russia, Peter makes clear the folly of this claim and demonstrates the specifically antireligious (and particularly anti-Christian) nature of that and other communist regimes.

Atheist’s fury

Peter asks, “Why is there such a fury against religion now?” He answers,

“Only one reliable force stands in the way of the power of the strong over the weak … Only one reliable force restrains the hand of the man of power. And in an age of power-worship, the Christian religion has become the principal obstacle to the desire of earthly utopians for absolute power” (p. 83).

The great assault on God in Europe and North America, he believes, is a specific attack on Christianity. Jesus’ dictum, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36) asserts that the utopian society of which the secularists dream is unattainable; and his statement, “the poor you will always have with you” (Matt. 26:11), refutes their belief that their quest for absolute power is justified because, one day, it will produce the perfect world. The Christian assertion that there is absolute truth and unalterable, divinely appointed laws repudiates their belief that morality is relative and that the end justifies the means. Christianity alone, he maintains, stands against the new alliance between political utopianism and the new cult of the unstrained self, unleashed upon the Western world by many modern intellectuals (p. 98).
In his search for the answer to the question, ‘Why do atheists want there to be no God?’, Peter makes an interesting reference to Thomas Nagel, Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University. In his book The last Word, Nagel discussed his fear of religion and wrote,

“I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers … I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that” (p. 109).

Interestingly, Nagel continues,

“My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time. One of the tendencies it supports is the ludicrous overuse of evolutionary biology to explain everything about life, including everything about the human mind … There might still be thought to be a religious threat in the existence of the laws of physics themselves … but [this] seems to be less alarming to most atheists” (pp. 109, 110).

The New Atheism

Wikipedia

Figure 1. An abandoned Mogadishu street in 1993. Mogadishu had once been a beautiful city and a popular destination for tourists.

In the last part of his book, Peter eloquently describes the vigour and determination with which the New Atheists are pursuing their cause. Secularism, he argues, is fundamentally a political movement which seeks, with increasing energy, to remove the Christian restraints on power and the remaining traces of Christian moral law. In their zeal to establish their dream of a godless utopia, Peter likens them to the antitheist Communist regimes which unapologetically brought tyranny and destruction upon millions. Soviet Communism, he writes, “used the same language, treasured the same hopes and appealed to the same constituency as Western atheism does today” (p. 121). Although presently in Europe and North America, their methods stop short of physical violence, instead they drive their opponents from public debate by scorn, misrepresentation and smears (p. 126)—and he could have added, firing them from their jobs, as documented in Jerry Bergman’s book Slaughter of the Dissidents¹ and Ben Stein’s documentary Expelled.²
In the final chapter, Peter warns that the New Atheists are now laying the foundations of thought that will lead to religious instruction of children by parents being regulated and even prevented by law. Prominent writers, such as his brother Christopher and Professor Richard Dawkins now argue that raising children in the Christian (or any other) faith is nothing short of child abuse. Dawkins even argued, “Priestly groping of child bodies is disgusting. But it may be less harmful in the long run than priestly subversion of child minds” (p. 153). With this, too, is coming the push to outlaw the teaching of biblical creation. According to psychologist Professor Nicholas Humphrey, formerly of the London School of Economics,

“ … children have a human right not to have their minds crippled by exposure to other people’s bad ideas—no matter who these other people are … we should no more allow parents to teach their children to believe, for example, in the literal truth of the Bible … .”

Instead, he argues, society has a duty to teach children “the best scientific and philosophical understanding of the natural world— to teach, for example, the truth of evolution …” (pp. 153, 154).

Conclusion

The Rage Against God is a warm, honest testimony of a changed mind. In documenting his journey from unbelief to belief, Peter Hitchens unmasks the bankruptcy of the fashionable but deeply flawed arguments of the New Atheists. Drawing on his many years of international journalism, he points, compellingly, to the folly of man trying to make his way without God, and to the truth of the Christian worldview.

Related Articles

• Answering the ‘new atheists’
• Why do atheists hate God?
• Christopher Hitchens: Staring Death in the Face

References

1. See review by Lloyd, T., If you can’t beat them, ban them, J. Creation 23(2):37–40, 2009. Return to text.
2. Expelled: No intelligence allowed, Premise Media, 2008. Return to text.

Less is More

from here: http://www.wisdomhunters.com/2013/05/less-is-more/

But the LORD said to Gideon, “There are still too many men.  Take them down to the water, and I will sift them for you there.  If I say, ‘This one shall go with you,’ he shall go; but if I say, ‘This one shall not go with you,’ he shall not go.”  Judges 7:4

Less of some things can mean opportunity to trust in God with more things. This is why the sifting by your Savior need not be discouraging. His goal is not to harm you, but to strip you from any dependence on yourself or others and to rely solely on Him. Your financial limitations are an occasion to watch Him provide in ways that give Him the glory for your life. Less money means you have the occasion to trust Him with His creative provision. 

When some of your friends fall away it stings; but your best friend, Jesus, still remains. You can become involved with numerous relationships and miss engaging in intimacy with your Heavenly Father. Fewer true friends will lead to richer relationships and more time with God. If your life is driven by one new relationship after another you will drown in shallow living. Having fewer earthly relationships means you have more time for your Heavenly One. Less is more.

Take the time to shed the weight of worry and watch God work. A surrendered life can be efficiently leveraged. However, a life independent of God is severely limited in its influence. He is positioning you for unprecedented leadership and influence. Now is the time to quit mourning your losses and move on. You have a new lease on life with the Lord, so follow His lead. Watch Him take your “five loaves of bread and two fish” (Matthew 14:17-19) and multiply them way beyond your efforts and enthusiasm. What God breaks He rebuilds to be dependent on Him, and more influential. This rebuilding process has simplified your life; so don’t revert to complicated living. Less is truly more.
   
If “more is more” is your motto, you can easily become mean-spirited and hard to live with. A “more is more” mantra eventually becomes meaningless. You achieve and receive more, but to what end? There is no fulfillment outside of Kingdom-minded motives. If it is all about you, you will become miserable. If, on the other hand, it is less of you and more of Him, everyone is happy. This is how God works. “‘He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble’” (Luke 1:52).
   
Therefore, lower the volume of activity and wait in quietness. It may be time to talk less and listen more. The calming presence of Christ is priceless, so tap into His reservoir of renewal. Less worldly thinking and more heavenly thinking leads to discerning the will of God. Don’t just stand in awe of His robust accomplishments through your meager efforts. Now is the time to use this momentum generated by your Master. God is on a roll and you have the privilege of joining Him. By faith, stop doing two things before you add one. Slow down so God can speed up. Focus on quality and watch Him multiply the quantity. God wants to do more with less so He gets the glory. Decrease, so He can increase (John 3:30, KJV). Less is more—less of you and more of Him.

The flat earth myth

from here: http://creation.com/flat-earth-myth

by Jonathan Sarfati

©iStockphoto.com/InkkStudios | Nebula: NASA/CXC/Penn State/L. Townsley et al.

For the last 200 years or so, many anti-Christians have resorted to a scurrilous lie (acting consistently with their worldview¹): that the early and medieval Christian Church taught that the earth is flat.²
One of the most prominent recent examples is probably the most powerful man in the world, the US President Barack Hussein Obama:

Let me tell you something. If some of these folks [sic] were around when Columbus set sail–[laughter]–they must have been founding members of the Flat Earth Society [laughter]. They would not have believed that the world was round [applause]. We’ve heard these folks in the past.”³

Since President Obama also supports infanticide and gay ‘marriage’,⁴ which are clearly out of line with biblical teaching, should it be surprising that he would also repeat one of the commonest anti-Christian fables?

What did the early church really teach?

Historian Jeffrey Burton Russell (1934–) thoroughly demolished the flat earth myth over 20 years ago in his definitive study Inventing the Flat Earth.⁵
The famous evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould (1941–2002) favourably reviewed this masterpiece:

“There never was a period of ‘flat earth darkness’ among scholars (regardless of how the public at large may have conceptualized our planet both then and now). Greek knowledge of sphericity never faded, and all major medieval scholars accepted the earth’s roundness as an established fact of cosmology.”⁶

Russell showed that flat-earth belief was extremely rare in the Church. The flat earth’s two main proponents were obscure figures named Lactantius and Cosmas Indicopleustes (meaning “voyager to India”). However, they were hugely outweighed by tens of thousands of Christian theologians, poets, artists, scientists, and rulers who unambiguously affirmed that the earth was round. Russell documents accounts supporting earth’s sphericity from numerous medieval church scholars such as friar Roger Bacon (1220–1292), inventor of spectacles; leading medieval scientists such as John Buridan (1301–1358) and Nicholas Oresme (1320–1382); the monk John of Sacrobosco (c. 1195–c. 1256) who wrote Treatise on the Sphere, and many more.
One of the best-known proponents of a globe-shaped earth was the early English monk, theologian and historian, the Venerable Bede (673–735), who popularized the common BC/ AD dating system. Less well known was that he was also a leading astronomer of his day.⁷
In his book On the Reckoning of Time (De temporum ratione), among other things he calculated the creation of the world to be in 3952 BC, showed how to calculate the date of Easter, and explicitly taught that the earth was round. From this, he showed why the length of days and nights changed with the seasons, and how tides were dragged by the moon. Bede was the first with this insight, while Galileo explained the tides wrongly centuries later.⁸
Here is what Bede said about the shape of the earth—round “like a ball” not “like a shield”:

“We call the earth a globe, not as if the shape of a sphere were expressed in the diversity of plains and mountains, but because, if all things are included in the outline, the earth’s circumference will represent the figure of a perfect globe. … For truly it is an orb placed in the centre of the universe; in its width it is like a circle, and not circular like a shield but rather like a ball, and it extends from its centre with perfect roundness on all sides.”

And the leading church theologian of the middle ages, Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), wrote in his greatest work Summa Theologica/Theologiae:

“The physicist proves the earth to be round by one means, the astronomer by another: for the latter proves this by means of mathematics, e.g. by the shapes of eclipses, or something of the sort; while the former proves it by means of physics, e.g. by the movement of heavy bodies towards the centre, and so forth.”⁹

Orbs of medieval rulers

Figure 3: Richard II of England, coronation portrait, Westminster Abbey.
Credit: Wikipedia.org 

Figure 2: Henry III, Holy Roman Emperor (1017–1056), being presented with the orb of kingship.
Credit: Wikipedia.org

Figure 3: Coin of the Byzantine emperor Leontius (d. 705)
Credit: CC-BY-SA Classical Numismatic Group, Inc. www.cngcoins.com

As early as the 5^th century, medieval European kings carried a symbol called the globus cruciger, Latin for ‘cross-bearing orb’, as a Christian symbol of royal power. The orb, usually a golden sphere, represented the earth—hang on, a sphere representing a flat earth—something’s wrong here … oh that’s right, it was a spherical earth. It was topped by a cross to symbolise Christ’s lordship over the earth, and held by the ruler to symbolise that he had been entrusted to rule his lands. In medieval portraits, the scale didn’t indicate physical size but importance, hence the large size of the cross.
Indeed, there are many pictures portraying Christ Himself holding the orb, the classic Salvator Mundi (Saviour of the World) theme.

Why did people oppose Columbus?

The above demonstrate that Columbus (1451–1506) was never opposed by flat earthers, simply because there were none to oppose him, among either church or political leaders. So what was the real issue?
Columbus was trying to reach India by sea, the ‘long way’ around the earth. But to do that, his ships had to carry enough provisions for the length of the journey. He had learned that the 9^th-century Persian astronomer Alfraganus had estimated each degree of latitude spanned “56⅔ miles”. But Columbus thought Alfraganus meant the Roman mile (1,480 m, 4,856 ft), whereas he was using the Arabic mile (1,830 m, 6,004 ft). Thus Columbus thought that the earth’s circumference was only about ¾ of its actual length of about 40,000 km (25,000 miles). Columbus also greatly underestimated the distance between Japan and the Canary Islands as 3,000 Italian miles (3,700 km or 2,300 miles), whereas the distance by sea is more like 19,600 km (12,200 miles).
It was thus the size of the earth, not the shape, that was under dispute. His critics argued that ships of his day (1492) could not carry enough fresh water and food for such a huge journey. And they were right! Columbus was just lucky that an enormous continent was in the way. He knew nothing of previous Viking discoveries centuries earlier. And he still thought he had landed in the East Indies, the then-current name for the Indian subcontinent. The results of his mistake persist today, in the common name for the Native Americans—‘Indians’, a translation of Columbus’ Spanish term ‘indios’.

Sailors

An example of the misinformation in the ‘education’ system comes from the 20^th-century high-school history textbook The American Pageant by Thomas Bailey. Many of its editions claimed, “The superstitious sailors [of Columbus’ crew] … grew increasingly mutinous … because they were fearful of sailing over the edge of the world.”
However, sailors were well aware of the shape of the earth. One myth states that people realized that the earth was round because they saw ships slowly sinking below the horizon. But before telescopes, it was more likely the other way round: sailors returning to land saw high mountains before lowlands.
Also, sailors from the northern hemisphere crossed the equator well before Christ, and reported that in the South, the sun shone from the north. They also knew how to measure their latitude from the angle of the sun at noon, which works only with a spherical earth.

The rise of the Flat Earth lie

The above are the facts about Columbus. The much-parroted flat-earth myth about him comes not from history but from the tales of Washington Irving (1783–1859), The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (1828). Irving was probably America’s first genuine best-selling writer, but he admitted that he was “apt to indulge in the imagination.” Flat-earth belief was certainly a figment of his imagination.
It was bad enough that this myth entered the public perception thanks to Irving’s wide readership. But it became worse when it acquired the veneer of scholarship, so it could be used as a club with which to bash Christianity. The main propagandists for this cause were the notorious 19^th century anti-Christian bigots John William Draper (1811–1882) and Andrew Dickson White (1832–1918). Draper, a fine chemist and photographer—first president of the American Chemical Society—but a lousy historian, wrote History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1874) as a poorly informed polemic against the Church. White was a disgruntled ex-Episcopalian and the founder of Cornell University as the first explicitly secular university in the United States. He also published the two-volume work History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896).
Both authors relied heavily on the work of Cosmas, portraying his flat-earth teaching as typical rather than the almost forgotten, extreme minority view that it was. And they are the ones most responsible for the discredited ‘conflict thesis’ between Christianity and science, instead of the real history that the Christian world-view was responsible for science in the first place, while it was still-born in other places like ancient Greece and China.¹⁰
Colin Russell (1928– ), Emeritus Professor of History of Science and Technology at the Open University, writes:

“Draper takes such liberty with history, perpetuating legends as fact that he is rightly avoided today in serious historical study. The same is nearly as true of White, though his prominent apparatus of prolific footnotes may create a misleading impression of meticulous scholarship.”¹¹

Both J.B. Russell and Gould argue that Draper and White had an agenda to discredit Christians who opposed the then-new theories of Darwin as ‘flat earthers’. Nothing much has changed!

Flat earth leader is an evolutionist

Although hardly anyone in the Church has ever believed the flat earth myth, “Incredibly, some people still do,” wrote Natalie Wolchover in Live Science last year:

“The Flat Earth Society is an active organization currently led by a Virginian man named Daniel Shenton. Though Shenton believes in evolution and global warming, he and his hundreds, if not thousands, of followers worldwide also believe that the Earth is a disc that you can fall off of.”¹²

So next time an evolutionist calls you a ‘flat-earther’, point out that the leading flat-earther is one of his fellow evolutionists!

Lunar eclipse

Ancient proof of round earth

Figure 4: Time-lapse photos of the moon during a lunar partial eclipse, clearly showing the circular shadow produced by the ball-shaped earth.

The ancient Greeks well before Christ had realized that the earth is a globe, by observing lunar eclipses. They realized that at such times, the earth was between the moon and the sun, and it always cast a circular shadow, regardless of the direction, which proves that it’s a globe (see Fig. 4). For example, the famous philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BC) said:

“Either then the earth is spherical or it is at least naturally spherical. And it is right to call anything that which nature intends it to be, and which belongs to it, rather than which it is by constraint and contrary to nature. The evidence of the senses further corroborates this. How else would eclipses of the moon show segments shaped as we see them? As it is, the shapes which the moon itself each month shows are of every kind—straight, gibbous, and concave—but in eclipses the outline is always curved: and, since it is the interposition of the earth that makes the eclipse, the form of this line will be caused by the form of the earth’s surface, which is therefore spherical.”¹³

This lines up with the Bible: Isaiah 40:22 tells us that God “sits above the circle of the earth”. Indeed, the Hebrew word גוּח (khûg) implies ball-shaped, just as Bede taught about 1,400 years after Isaiah.

Summary

Almost all the early and medieval church scholars who commented on the earth’s shape explicitly said it was round.
Medieval European rulers used a golden sphere or orb called the globus cruciger to represent the earth under Christ’s rule.
Columbus’s opponents never disputed the shape of the earth, but only its size—and they were right!
The flat earth myth began with a fictional account of Columbus in the 19^th century by Washington Irving. Then it was aggressively pushed in influential anti-Christian polemics by Draper and White.

A final irony: the leading flat-earther today is an evolutionist.

References and notes

1. Sarfati, J., Evolutionist: it’s OK to deceive students to believe evolution, creation.com/deceive, 24 September 2008. Return to text.
2. For many examples, see Bergman, J., The flat-earth myth and creationism, J. Creation 22(2):114–120, 2008; creation.com/flat. Return to text.
3. Obama, B.H., Speech on energy at Prince George’s County Community College, Largo, MD, 15 March 2012. Return to text.
4. Muehlenberg, B., The Obamanator and the Decline of the West, billmuehlenberg.com, 12 May 2012; Sarfati, J., Gay ‘marriage’ and the consistent outcome of Genesis compromise, creation.com/gay, June 2012. Return to text.
5. Russell, J.B., Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus & Modern Historians, Praeger, 1991. Return to text.
6. Gould, S.J., The Late Birth of a Flat Earth, in: Dinosaur in a Haystack: Reflections in Natural History, 1^st paperback ed., pp. 38–50, New York: Three Rivers Press, NY,1997. Return to text.
7. Henderson, T., World-famous astronomers celebrate the Venerable Bede, The Journal, journallive.co.uk, 13 February 2009. Return to text.
8. The Galileo affair is another anti-Christian myth of ‘religion v. Science’, although it was really science vs. science. See Sarfati, J., Galileo Quadricentennial: Myth vs fact, Creation 31(3):49–51; creation.com/galileo-quadricentennial. Return to text.
9. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Question 54: The distinction of habits, Article 2, Reply to objection 2. Return to text.
10. Primary source documentation is available in my articles, Why does science work at all? Creation 31(3):12–14, 2009; creation.com/whyscience; and, The biblical roots of modern science, Creation 32(4):32–36, 2010; creation.com/roots. Return to text.
11. Russell, C.A., “The Conflict of Science and Religion”, in: Encyclopedia of the History of Science and Religion, p. 15, New York 2000. Return to text.
12. Wolchover, N., Ingenious ‘Flat Earth’ Theory Revealed In Old Map, Live Science, 23 June 2011. Return to text.
13. Works of Aristotle I: p. 389. Return to text.

Lifting the veil on the UFO phenomenon

  from here: http://creation.com/lifting-the-veil-ufo-phenomenon

Gary Bates on fellow ‘abduction’ researcher Joe Jordan

Though Joe Jordan’s ministry might easily be misunderstood by some Christians, his specialty in the UFO phenomenon is actually a subset of the creation vs evolution debate. Joe was initially led astray in this area by popular culture, which shows how important it is for Christians to engage the culture with sound information—regardless of how weird we might think it to be at times. As a fellow traveller in this area, Joe and I have been in a friendly symbiotic relationship for many years now. His research, which specifically deals with the claims of people believing to have been ‘abducted by aliens’, helped me expose the satanic deceptions that underpin these experiences in my book, Alien Intrusion: UFOs and the Evolution Connection.

Prior to becoming a Christian, Joe described himself as a ‘crystal-ball-rolling new-ager’ with an interest in science fiction, which he saw as merely escapism. Although an evolutionist due to his public school education, it was not immediately obvious to him that most sci-fi and its depiction of alien life has evolutionism at its core (if life evolved on Earth it must have evolved elsewhere in a 14-billion-year-old universe).
Initially, Joe did not know much about the phenomenon. A book called UFO Crash at Roswell piqued his interest.¹ It claimed to be a scientific investigation of the alleged crash of a flying saucer at Roswell, New Mexico, in July 1947. Joe’s experience resonated with me, because as a young man the best-ever-selling book on the subject, The Roswell Incident, had convinced me, like many others, that the government was complicit in hiding the truth about aliens.

Drawn into a substitute religion

Photo: Gary Bates

Gary Bates and Joe Jordan team up at Roswell

Now ‘hooked’, Joe wanted to know more. He visited a local UFO museum, talked with UFO researchers and read up. He was surprised to see a large array of ‘spiritual’ UFO books dealing with events like the Fatima sightings.² Christianity is under assault from this area, because many believe that supernatural encounters and miracles in the Bible can be attributed to benevolent aliens being mistaken as angels or even God, and that these aliens may even be mankind’s creators.³
Joe quickly qualified to be a state section director and investigator with the highly respected MUFON,⁴ investigating claims of UFO sightings and experiences of those who claim encounters with ‘alien’ beings. At monthly MUFON meetings, Joe was strongly confronted by the spiritual paradigm of the UFO-believers. He realized that, for many, it is a full-blown religion. These ‘highly evolved aliens’ were claiming to be helping humanity evolve to a kind of enlightened ascendency into a new age. Although Joe was brought up in the church, like many youth he abandoned the idea of a biblical creator. This ‘new religion’ gave Joe a sense of spirituality, but without the accountability that the Bible demands. With no supreme creator, man can make up his own rules. Each experience is just part of one’s spiritual growth into the new age.

UFO research revealed the truth

Photo: Gary Bates

I was able to catch up with Joe Jordan, Guy and Nicole Malone when they invited me to be the keynote speaker at one of their annual Roswell outreaches. For a report on this event see Reaching out at Roswell.

Around this time Joe and fellow MUFON investigator Wes Clark started their own research group called CE4⁵ specifically to deal with alleged alien abductions or ‘Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind’⁶ experiences. They attempted to unravel the more bizarre aspects of this phenomenon that defy scientific explanation. Experiencers record huge chunks of ‘missing time’ that cannot be accounted for; allegedly physical aliens are claimed to walk through walls; and the experiencers themselves are often taken up to the spaceship through the ceilings of their homes. MUFON and other researchers had enormous problems trying to explain the physics-defying aspects of these abduction-type experiences, which were escalating.
Joe saw the damage these were causing in the lives of the experiencers. He and Wes revisited all the cases they had investigated to see if there was something that the other investigators were missing. In the fall of 1996, Joe was working on two particularly disturbing accounts which seemed more sinister than many of the others. A Christian friend told them that they were dealing in the spiritual realm and thus needed protection. “So, I pulled out my crystals”, Joe said. “But she shared the Bible with me instead. It was the first time I’d ever heard a true gospel presentation and understood what Christianity was really all about. I confessed my sins and became a Christian.”

The most hated man in UFOlogy?

Joe is obviously not popular with many UFO believers for ‘blowing the whistle’ and revealing the deception behind it all—and for taking a biblical ‘No ET’ stand. For many, such truth threatens their livelihoods because the UFO phenomenon is big business. The single most popular entertainment is sci-fi, for instance. Every year Joe and fellow collaborators Guy and Nicole Malone used to run conferences and outreaches in the town of Roswell, New Mexico, on the July 4 weekend, when the town’s population doubles in size to commemorate the infamous ‘Roswell Incident’ of 1947.

Now Joe wanted to reconcile the UFO phenomenon with his newfound faith. He and Wes attended a two-week Bible study. Although Joe’s new circle of friends were Christians, most believed that God created intelligent sentient life on other planets. Now life was either created or it evolved, and it is because of evolution that most people believe that life evolved elsewhere as well. But as I can confirm from many years speaking on the subject, most Christians wrongly believe God created such life elsewhere, “Otherwise why would He have made the universe so big?” For them, this allows God to have created the aliens, and this seems to explain the phenomenon. However, such an idea actually undermines the very gospel of Christ and the reason He came to Earth (for more see reference⁷). Back in 2005 after reading the first edition of Alien Intrusion, Joe said to me, “Gary, your book has helped me shut the door on the idea of ET life. Despite what most Christians think, it showed me that the Bible clearly does not allow for such things.”
It was encouraging that two Christians, continents apart (I was then living in Australia), could come to the same conclusions and help each other, if prepared to be open to what the Bible actually says. Alien Intrusion recently had a chapter added. It contains a new hypothesis to try to solve what is really happening to people during such 4^th and 5^th-kind encounters. Joe provided feedback that this hypothesis was ‘spot on’. It meant a lot, given that he has probably counselled more experiencers than anyone else I know.

The unwanted piece of the puzzle

One of Joe’s cases involved a brand-new Christian called Bill D. During an alleged alien abduction he cried out “Jesus, help me!” and the encounter immediately stopped. When Joe contacted other MUFON investigators to see if they had had similar cases, they would only agree to talk to Joe if it was ‘off the record’ for fear of their careers. The truth was they all knew of similar accounts of abductions being stopped by people praying, singing hymns or calling on the name of Jesus. But because it was ‘religious in nature’ and not ‘scientific’, the evidence was being deliberately ignored and actually hidden. Joe’s CE4 group knew there must be more cases with which they could expose the deception. A local newspaper, Florida Today, reported on CE4’s initial findings. The story went viral via the press and internet, and suddenly, lots of people were contacting CE4 sharing similar testimonies. This research of Joe’s was pivotal in helping me and others create awareness in the Church on this widespread phenomenon.
Joe’s current ministry sees him counselling many experiencers with the aim of leading them to Christ. To date, he has worked with over 400 people who have had their ‘abduction’ episodes halted in the name of Christ (some of them don’t want to be identified). He has valuable insight into the whole UFO realm as he has seen it from two different sets of eyes—as an unbelieving new-ager, and now as a Bible-believing Christian. Like me, he found that the Bible has the answers to explain what is really happening. Moreover, the Bible also explains that non-Christians are unable to see the phenomenon for what it really is, “The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Corinthians 2:14 ESV)

The need for information

This is a huge mission field; polls often suggest that millions of people claim to have been abducted by aliens. Whether accurate or not, this is clearly a growing and disturbing phenomenon in our midst. And due to beliefs in evolution and popular cultural ideas that older, technologically advanced aliens are visiting the earth, people are ripe for deception. For one who has never been in a church, read a Bible, or known Jesus as their Saviour, such events can be a life-changing experience that causes people to reject all thought of God as their Creator and Judge. When people look at the majestic universe God created, they tend to ponder what else might be out there. Instead, we should be considering, in awe, the One who made it. For as Psalm 19:1 reminds us, “The heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.”