Do Dinosaurs Disprove the Bible?

In my previous post, I wrote about the fate of our pets. Now I'm tackling the thorny question of dinosaurs. Do they really disprove or invalidate the Bible?

One "got ya" question atheists ask Christians is how could their be dinosaurs if the earth is only six thousand years old. Where did all these wondrous creatures come from and then have their bones fossilized in ancient rock layers?

Some Christians believe that there was a gap of millions of years between the first and second verses of Genesis chapter one. Others believe that God put fossils there to make the planet look ancient. Some believe that when the world flooded, Noah couldn't bring such large creatures into the ark. So, what's the real answer?

Hank Hanegraaff, host of The Bible Answer Man, espouses an interesting doctrine which makes logical sense. He teaches that the earth is billions of years old but God used days as a mnemonic device to help ancient people remember the hierarchical order of creation. Viewed this way, it easily explains how light could be created before the stellar bodies. It also matches empirical observations of the universe.

Whenever I've explained this doctrine to fellow Christians, they reacted like I was a horrendous heretic. They cling tenaciously to the six-day creation narrative as if the old earth argument was espousing evolution. This is manifestly untrue. Evolution teaches that there is no divine intelligence and that everything came to be by blind chance. The mnemonic method Moses used when writing the creation account allows for vast periods of geological time but without eliminating God from the picture.

I once believed a lot of notions which I now know are manifestly untrue. Now that I know better, I wrote a book called How I Was Razed so people could learn from my mistakes. Please contact me regarding this wondrous memoir of God's providence. It's well worth reading.

Why Give God Thanks?

In this increasingly secular society, the true meaning of Thanksgiving Day is becoming lost. To many individuals, it's just a break from work and another day to sleep in. If only people could understand that we have God Almighty to thank for our daily blessings.

Scientists have taught people that we just happened here by accident. The perfection we see in nature is merely a function of natural laws. But why should these laws be present and active universally in the first place? Gravity works the same way across the cosmos. Light travels at a constant speed everywhere. Effects always have causes. The only way an effect, such as life, came into being is by a cause greater or equal to itself.

Evolution relies upon random chance and billions of years to explain how life came into being. The flaw in that idea is entropy. If a single protein molecule came into being by chance, so many destructive factors would cancel it out. Forming two protein molecules would take infinitely more time. Some scientists postulate the notion of parallel universes but that only magnifies the number of random destructive forces.

As I've pointed out earlier, all biological processes need to be  present and working simultaneously or the organism in question dies. The chemical reactions in the human eye alone show that there couldn't have been a slow process of additive mutations to create the end product.

God's fingerprints are all over creation. We can ascertain his existence by the wondrous interrelationship of various organisms and the intelligence present in their DNA. Even our ability to reason is a gift from the Lord.

The sophistry of evolutionists once fooled me but now I know better. I wrote about this in a book called How I Was Razed: A Journey from Cultism to Christianity. Contact me for details on how to purchase this awesome testimony of God's providence.

DID I WASTE MORE THAN FIFTEEN YEARS?

I've blogged often about my time at a cultic house church and how I learned many blasphemous doctrines. But were those years really wasted? After considerable thought, I believe they weren't lost after all. Here's why I think so.

Pastor Steve Wells at South Main Baptist Church preached on 1 Philippians 1:12 a few Sundays ago which reads, "Now it is my purpose to make clear to you, brothers, that the cause of the good news has been helped by my experiences;" Though the apostle Paul was in prison, those circumstances actually helped spread the message of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.

As I listened to Pastor Steve preach, I realized that I have actually benefited from being in that misguided congregation.  During those years, I had taken a correspondence Bible study course and read my King James Version from cover to cover. Though I learned wrong doctrines, I became familiar with Bible books and where they were located. I even memorized some verses, though I did so to prove Brother Herald's warped theology to others.

When I turned my back on God for nine years and studied evolution, I gained a better understanding of the theory. It seemed fairer to me than Christianity because nobody could be faulted for genetic defects. The cult members believed that ancestral sin was transmitted from parents to children instead of everybody being responsible for their own transgressions. Now I know that the opposite is true.

When I repented of my prodigal behaviour toward God's love for me, I eagerly relearned the essential doctrines of the faith. Though years passed while I slowly learned how wrong Brother Herald was, I realized that many other naive believers were in the same condition I once was.

In 2008, I decided to write a memoir of my time at the house church and how the heavenly Father led me out of its spiritual grip. I set to work in March of that year and completed the manuscript four years later. During that time, I researched various cults as well as how they deceive eager truth seekers. I also took great pains to make sure I wasn't writing anything that was blasphemous or misleading. Additionally, I double-checked what I wrote to see if it squared with what I remember teaching others and what I staunchly believed in back then. I also listened to various Christian radio shows to learn the extent of evolution's consequences. By the final edit, I knew I could stand behind my book's contents.

I wrote extensively about that house church and listed its doctrines in How I Was Razed: A Journey from Cultism to Christianity. Please check it out at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Virtual Bookworm.

OUR PRIVILEGED PLANET

What makes our planet special? According to some scientists, we orbit an unremarkable star in an average galaxy in a vast universe. What makes earth special is that it's perfectly suited for life.

Even a quick look at the other planets in our solar system shows that we live in the best orbit. Venus and Mercury are too close to the sun and the other worlds are too far away. Venus also has a thick atmosphere of carbon dioxide which creates a green house effect. This planet is actually hotter than airless Mercury.

Mars, though it might have had water and a thicker atmosphere at one time is now a barren planet with almost no air. Likewise, the outer planets are unsuitable because of their distance from the sun and lack of oxygen.

Additionally, earth's moon is large enough to create tides which stir up the oceans but not enough to flood the land. During an eclipse, it covers the disk of the sun but allows us to see our star's atmosphere. If the moon was closer or larger, we wouldn't be able to see the sun's corona, Too small or far away and the eclipse would be too bright to study.

Our star is the right size as well. Too big and the earth would eventually stop rotating. One side would be endlessly facing the blazing sun while the other side would freeze.

Earth also has a spinning liquid iron core which generates a protective magnetic field. Charged particles from the sun are deflected around the planet by these magnetic field lines, thereby preserving life. Smaller planets such as Mars have no liquid iron cores. Radioactive particles bombard its surface, though the thin atmosphere does attenuate them somewhat.

Our place in the Milky Way is likewise the optimal one for astronomy. Too close to the centre and nearby stars would make it difficult to see other stars. The excess radiation would also prove deadly to life. If earth was inside a spiral arm of the galaxy, we wouldn't be able to tell which stars belonged to it and which were outside. Being between the spiral arms allows us to see the universe better. If Earth was at the edge of the galaxy, it would lack the heavier elements required for life.

Additionally, the laws of physics demonstrate how finely tuned the universe is to support life. If any of the parameters were changed, such as gravity being a bit stronger, intelligent life couldn't exist. Arguing that there are multiple universes and this one got lucky just pushes the problem down the road. The laws which allow for our universe are so finely tuned that even a slight shift wouldn't allow stars to form.

Some scientists speculate that other planets might have life on them. While it might be possible, we have no evidence of it. We appear to be the only ones in the universe and our planet shows apparent evidence of being made for us.

More evidence of our favoured position in the universe can be seen on the video The Privileged Planet produced by Illustra Media. This DVD shows that there is a purpose to this universe and our place in it.

I also wrote about how I rejected evolution in How I Was Razed: A Journey from Cultism to Christianity. Check it out at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Virtual Bookworm Publishers.