Category Archives: Apologetics

July 10, 2016 · 10:30

Justice For All

12172967 - justice (greek:themis,latin:justitia) blindfolded with scales, sword and money on one scale. corruption and bribing concept

And judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off: for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter. (Isaiah 59:14)

The Pledge of Allegiance of the United States is an expression of allegiance to the Flag and the Republic of the United States of America. Colonel George Balch originally composed it in 1887, and Francis Bellamy later revised it in 1892.  Congress formally adopted the Pledge in 1942, and the official name of “The Pledge of Allegiance” was adopted in 1945. The last change in language came on Flag Day, 1954 when the words “under God” were added.[1]

The closing phrase of “The Pledge of Allegiance” asserts that this republic, “under God,” offers “liberty and justice for all.” This week, following the celebration of the 240th anniversary of the birth of our nation, that assertion proved false when FBI Director, James Comey, succinctly detailed the numerous security violations incurred by former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, when she carelessly handed classified electronic documents. The recitation of infractions enumerated by the FBI director exposed the litany of lies voiced by the Democrat Presidential Candidate.

In her position as Secretary of State under President Barack Obama, Clinton repeatedly and flagrantly violated the “Espionage Act” (18 U.S. Code § 793 (f)),[2] and then lied about having done so. She said her emails resided on a single server; there were four. She said she communicated on only one handheld device; there were several. She said she did not send or receive any communications “marked” classified. That was untrue, but even if not marked classified, in her position as Secretary of State, she should have recognized sensitive material when she saw it, so she has no excuse. She claims to have surrendered all emails to the FBI. That was false, and furthermore, Director Comey revealed that Clinton’s lawyers deleted large quantities of emails and then “scrubbed” their devices to render them insusceptible to forensic investigation.

With the mountains of evidence clearly stacked against her, FBI Director, James Comey declared that no “reasonable” prosecutor should find cause to bring charges against Hillary Clinton based on the premise that the evidence did not support “malicious intent.” The problem with Comey’s assessment is that the statute says nothing about “intent.” The fact is that Clinton dealt with highly sensitive material involving national security for which she was responsible, and she carelessly handled that material. The statute in question reads as follows:

Whoever [including the Secretary of State and even the President], being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer—Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both. (Emphasis mine.)

Mrs. Clinton, in her position as Secretary of State, had “lawful possession or control” of many sensitive documents relating to the “national defense.” Through “gross negligence,” she permitted those documents “to be removed from [their] proper place of custody,” i.e. secured government servers, “in violation of [her] trust.” Then attempted to obscure and obfuscate the fact, first of all, by storing them on a personal servers rather than on secure government servers, and secondly, by deleting (destroying) them from those servers. One should note that nothing in the statute addresses “intent.” In short, if a person is a lawful custodian of sensitive information related to national defense, that person is responsible and accountable for the security of that information.

Many in government have been severely punished for lesser offenses. When questioned by the Congressional investigative committee, Comey was asked if one of his FBI agents were to be charged with such offenses, what would happen to that agent. Comely admitted that such a violator would have his/her security clearance revoked and suffer such punishment as required by law. Yet, no “reasonable prosecutor” should bring any charges against Hillary Clinton.

With that FBI “recommendation,” Attorney General, Loretta Lynch exonerated Mrs. Clinton clearing the path for her presidency. Heaven help us!

In the classic novel, Animal Farm by George Orwell, one of the closing lines says, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” Iustitia, the Roman goddess of justice (Lady Justice), is portrayed with a balance scale in one hand, a sword in the other, and a blindfold over her eyes. The image speaks of equality under the law. With her eyes covered, Lady Justice sees no race. She sees no rich or poor. She sees no ruler or subject. Her judgment is weighed on the scale of the law, and the guilty succumb to her sword regardless of status or stature. That is as it should be. That is as it once was in America, but it now seems that the law applies only to the masses and excuses some of a new elite class of rulers. These animals are more equal than others. Anarchy now rules in our land.

Before his death, King David said, “The Spirit of the LORD spake by me, and his word was in my tongue. The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to me, He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God” ( 2 Samuel 23:1-3, emphasis mine).

Notes:

[1]  Wikipedia, “Pledge of Allegiance,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_of_Allegiance/.

[2]  See https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/793/

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June 19, 2016 · 10:30

Natural Selection

Animals

And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. (Genesis 1:24-25)

Natural selection is the means by which Charles Darwin proposed all life on earth sprang from a common source. From where or how that common source first appeared he did not explain nor can his modern devotees.

According to Dictionary.Com, natural selection is “the process by which forms of life having traits that better enable them to adapt to specific environmental pressures, as predators, changes in climate, or competition for food or mates, will tend to survive and reproduce in greater numbers than others of their kind, thus ensuring the perpetuation of those favorable traits in succeeding generations” (emphasis mine). That is a very reasonable definition of what we observe in nature. (For purposes of this discussion, I will limit “life” to those creatures that have “breath” and “blood” in keeping with the biblical definition of life.) All living things possess traits that enable them to survive and thrive in their unique environments. A population achieves stasis when the dominant traits pass on to succeeding generations. Weaker elements of the population are eliminated either through infanticide (mothers kill their own young when they detect abnormalities) or through genetic deficiencies that prevent certain individuals from surviving in their environment. This “process” assures a healthy population.

Not long ago, my wife and I visited a raptor rescue organization in Sitka, Alaska dedicated to restoring to health bald eagles and other predatory birds found wounded in one fashion or another. Once the birds are healthy, they are returned to the wild. At the shelter, they had a female bald eagle that they kept for public education purposes. She was beautiful except that her upper and lower beak overlapped – crossed over each other – in a way that would prevent her survival in the wild. With her distorted beak, she would not be able kill and eat her prey. She could survive in the shelter only because she was handfed small portions of food that she could manage. The staff at the shelter neutered her so that she could not reproduce and pass on the defective trait to her progeny. However, in the wild, the process of natural selection would ensure that her defect would not propagate because she would likely starve to death before procreating. That is what natural selection accomplishes; it prevents perpetuation of unfavorable traits in succeeding generations.

Darwinian evolutionists acknowledge this attribute of natural selection but further attribute an additional process whereby minor changes in the traits over long periods enhance a creature’s ability to adapt to its environment. They suggest that minor beneficial mutations over time improve the creature’s chances of adapting to changing environments. Never mind that such beneficial mutations have never been observed or that such a notion violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics, i.e. entropy. Things in nature tend to degenerate; they do not improve. That is why natural selection is important to maintain stasis in a species.  Without it entropy takes over, and a species degenerates to the point of extinction.

Evolutionists “believe it is totally rational to explain that life’s complexity results from the ever-upward pressure of natural selection’s ability to see and save traits, though it, itself, is undirected and absolutely blind to any goal. [They] must use words like ‘undirected’ and ‘blind’ to reinforce that natural selection, not God, creates nature’s design.”[1] “Genetic alterations called mutations can profoundly affect expression. Evolutionists believe a major source of new genetic material is mutation. The vital need, however, is some type of management—a substitute designer that ‘sees,’ ‘selects,’ ‘saves,’ and ‘builds’ with mutations. ‘Natural selection’ is intended to fill this role.”[2]

So, unwittingly, evolutionists attribute to nature intelligence and discernment to select traits suited for the creature as dictated by their environment. Nature and natural selection effectively take the place of God as Designer and Creator.

The absurdity of the evolutionists’ notion of natural selection presents several problems besides the obvious. Nature is just what is. It does not possess the ability to think, to choose, or to select. Nature is simply what exists around us – our environment. It is the air around us, the earth beneath us, and the creatures that share our planet. That is all nature is. That aside, for nature to produce the diversity that we see in life, it would have to overcome the hurdle of irreducible complexity, i.e. everything needed for life and for reproduction must be present all at once in order for the creature to survive. Even the simplest single-cell life form is so complex that it cannot survive if a single protein is missing in its makeup. Not only that, but if nature could manage to create the first single-cell creature from which all other life would spring, it must accomplish this feat not only once, but multiple millions of times simultaneously to ensure survival of the prototype. Nature must then overcome or reverse the effects of entropy to allow minor beneficial mutations to change the creature into other forms without losing the original prototype. Variations at first reproduce asexually, but as they become increasingly complex over millions of years, sexual reproduction becomes necessary. Here nature must jump another huge hurdle. Nature now must create male and female simultaneously. If nature creates a male and no female, or vice versa, the new species dies – no evolution. The more we ponder this belief, the more the problems exacerbate. One wonders how such a notion qualifies as “science.” Of those who religiously hold to this fantasy, the Bible says, “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools” (Romans 1:22).

God built into His creation a system by which stasis can be achieved and maintained. This system might be called natural selection or it might be called survival of the fittest, but in either case, the purpose is to maintain the health – the good traits – in a population. In nature, there exists a food chain where predator lives off prey, but if the predator exhausts its food supply, the predator will starve and die out as well. When the jackrabbit population explodes, the coyotes feast, until the jackrabbit population diminishes. Then the coyote population begins to die off. Only the strongest of the population survive. Meanwhile, with the diminishing coyote population, the jackrabbits multiply and there is resurgence. Eventually the coyote population comes back due to the abundance of food, and the cycle starts over. This is by God’s design and it has nothing to do with evolution. Following the Global Flood recorded in Genesis 6-9 God promised, “While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease” (Genesis 8:22). This is exactly what we see in nature. When God created sea creatures and creatures of the air on Day Five (Genesis 1:20-23), He determined that they would reproduce “after their kind.” He created them all complete and perfectly suited to their environments, and He declared His creation “good” (Genesis 1:21). When God created the land animals on Day Six (Genesis 1:24-25), He determined that they would reproduce “after their kind.” He created them all complete and perfectly suited to their environments. The Bible makes no allowance for evolution. Natural selection, as a system designed by the Creator, serves to maintain the health of a population, but its design does not promote evolution of one “kind” into another. God does not need “nature” to help Him create. He created nature, and all the systems needed to run this wonderfully complex world in which we live. Nature does not “select.” God creates!

Notes:

[1]  Randy Guliuzza, P.E., M.D., “Natural Selection Is Not ‘Nature’s Intelligence’” http://www.icr.org/article/natural-selection-not-natures-intelligence/

[2]  Randy Guliuzza, P.E., M.D., “Darwin’s Sacred Imposter: How Natural Selection Is Given Credit for Design in Nature” http://www.icr.org/article/darwins-sacred-imposter-how-natural/

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June 12, 2016 · 10:30

All Things Work Together For Good

Everything will be alright

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28)

Were you to ask me what my all-time favorite verse of the Bible is, without hesitation I would say Romans 8:28.  I favor many verses for various reasons, for example, Genesis 1:1 is foundational: “In the beginning God created the heaven[s] and the earth.” God as Creator settles a lot of unanswered and unanswerable questions. Along with that is John 1:1-3, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made” reveals that Jesus Christ is the Creator, who “was made flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). It was He who, “being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:8) because, “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16). I take comfort from knowing that, “The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want” (Psalm 23:1). He will meet my every need.

Sometimes, everyone comes to a point in life, maybe more than once in a lifetime, when we feel abandoned by our Shepherd, and we feel that our needs are not being met. In those times, I take refuge in the assurance of Romans 8:28, but it can easily be misunderstood to mean that everything will always be good. That has certainly not been my life experience. To properly understand the significance of this verse, we must see it in its context and examine it in its original language, Greek.

In context, Paul is addressing a group of Christians in Rome. He assures them that for those who have placed their trust in Christ, there is “no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit” (Romans 8:1). Those who “are in Christ Jesus” manifest that fact in the way they conduct their lives, i.e. “who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit,” and he explains what that means in the succeeding verses. Those who walk (conduct their life) after (according to the leading of) the Spirit have the Spirit of God dwelling (residing) in them (v. 9). Let that thought sink in and penetrate your heart. If you are a child of God, you have His Spirit taking up residence in you! Because that is true, “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God” (v. 16). If you are truly God’s child, you should never have a doubt about that. If you do, the Holy Spirit is there to reassure you of that fact. Now, if you never get that reassurance, you need to reexamine your status before God and get that settled. God will let you know whether you are His or not; He does not want you to be deceived.

Another benefit of being a child of God, is that you share the same inheritance with Christ (v. 17). All the unimaginable glory of heaven belongs to God’s children for eternity! The condition (“if so be that we suffer with him”) means we “who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit” (v. 1). Here in America, we have not experienced persecution like many of our brothers and sisters in other parts of the world, but we should not get too comfortable in that thought. Persecution may yet come. Jesus said, “If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you” (John 15:18-19, emphasis mine). Unless you have just not been paying attention, there is a growing animosity toward Christians in this nation. Have you sensed it? Have you been rejected by friends or family because of your faith in Christ? Have you suffered with Him and because of Him? Take heart, such suffering is only temporary for God’s children, but the payoff is out of this world (v. 18)!

God’s Spirit in us also helps us in our weakness. When we stray and “walk after the flesh,” the Spirit is there to remind us and bring us back in line. Also, when our heart is burdened to the point that we cannot express what is in our heart so that “we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered” (v.26). Because God’s Spirit indwells us, He knows us intimately, better than we know ourselves, and He gives expression to the Father of what is on our hearts.

Verse 29 tells us that God, in His foreknowledge, predetermined (predestined) that His children would be conformed – molded into – to the image of His Son. That is God’s purpose for our lives. We are not completely passive in this process, but as we make ourselves available and malleable to the Holy Spirit’s leading in our life, God, not we, shapes us into the form of Jesus Christ to minister to the world around us, and yes, even to suffer for Him.

It is in this context we read, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose” (v. 28). The Greek syntax places the words of greatest significance at the beginning of the sentence, and those of secondary significance at the end of the sentence. The strict translation of the Greek text is: “We know, moreover, that to those [who are] loving God, all things work together for good, to those according to [His] purpose called [are] being.” First, we who are His children know. This is not up for debate. It is firm. It is assured, and this we know because the Spirit informs us. We are those “who are loving God” consistently. For us, “all things” – the Greek panta is all inclusive – work together for our “good” (Greek: agathon, meaning benefit). This does not say that everything that happens to us will be “good.” Just look around. We see our brothers and sisters suffering with cancer or other illnesses. We see them losing employment or in financial difficulty. We see them struggle with familial difficulties or other relationship problems. Perhaps we experience those things ourselves. No one can say these things are “good.” But the promise of this verse is that God will use those trials for our benefit. God blesses us with many good things, but often, when things go well, we forget the source of those blessings. Sadly, it is the trials that come into our lives that draw us closer to God. Those are the times of our greatest benefit, and God uses those times to help conform us into the image of His Son. Remember, our inheritance is not in this world but with Christ.

God uses ALL things – good and bad – to work for good for His children. This promise does not apply generally to all people. This promise is specifically for God’s people – those “who are called according to His purpose” – that of being conformed to the image of His Son.

When I experience trials in my life, Romans 8:28 gives me the assurance that God works all things for my benefit, and I trust Him for that. Paul ends this chapter in Romans by asking, “If God be for us, who can be against us? … Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” (vv. 31, 35). His answer, “Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us … [nothing] shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (vv. 37, 39). No, all of these things work together for our good – our benefit.

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June 1, 2016 · 11:03

The True Moral Fallacy of #justiceforHarambe – Fall on Grace Fall on Grace

And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man’s brother will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man. (Genesis 9:5-6)

Equating animals to humans is the logical result of evolutionary thinking. If we all evolved from the same source, then all creatures are equally amoral, and there should be no outrage over a human killing an ape to save a human. But there is outrage, and the humans are held to a higher standard. Why? As you point out so clearly, it is because humans are created in God’s image, and we have His innate moral standard, but the ape does not. Furthermore, God’s moral standard does hold human life as more valuable than animal life. (See Genesis 9:5-6 above) Human life is to be preserved above all others. By the way, that would include “unborn” human life.

Source: The True Moral Fallacy of #justiceforHarambe – Fall on Grace Fall on Grace

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May 22, 2016 · 10:30

No Accident

 

CAUSE: Hydroplaning. EFFECT: Wreck. No Accident!

CAUSE: Hydroplaning. EFFECT: Wreck. No Accident!

All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. (John 1:3)

Commuting to work on the rain-drenched LBJ Freeway in Dallas, Texas this past week, I was at once amused and terrified at the maneuvers made by some crazy drivers obviously unaware of the hazardous road conditions. It reminded me of something that my old Driver’s Ed teacher repeated often a hundred years ago, “Accidents don’t happen; they are caused.” Apparently the crazies on LBJ never took driving lessons from my old Driver’s Ed teacher.

The truth of the adage obeys the very basic law of physics, that of cause and effect. Simply stated, everything that happens, i.e. every “effect,” has a cause. On the highway, this basic law expresses itself through Newton’s three Laws of Motion: (1) Inertia – an object in motion tends to stay in motion unless some external force acts upon it, (2) Acceleration – when a force acts on a mass (object) to produce motion, and (3) Reaction – for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. These three laws are expressions of the primary law of cause and effect. There is a series of cause-and-effect scenarios that propel a vehicle down the road at high rates of speed. Friction is a stabilizing force acting upon the tires of a car to counter the inertia that would maintain the car’s high rate of speed. However, on a wet, rainy day, friction yields to a phenomenon known as hydroplaning. This “cause” creates a thin barrier of water between the surface of the road and the tires, which effectively negates the force of friction on the tires. The tires lose contact with the road surface and now skim along on a slippery sheet of water. Inertia now controls the forward motion of the vehicle, and the incognizant operator unwittingly presumes he is in full control until he has to make a quick lane change or a sudden stop. It takes little imagination to visualize the “effects” that may result. The frequent “mishaps” witnessed on the highway are “incidents” not “accidents.” The majority of the time, the main cause of these incidents is the loose nut behind the wheel. Lesson: be aware of road conditions!

Forgive the defensive driving lesson, but the point was to illustrate the law of cause and effect. Nothing that exists just happens. There are no accidents. This simple and common fact is overlooked or ignored by naturalists/evolutionists/atheists when dealing with the matter of origins. What caused the universe? The Big Bang they say. What caused the Big Bang? They say that an infinitesimal “singularity” rapidly expanded and produced all that there is. Even though no one existed to witness or record this great event, they (the “theoretical” physicists) can tell us what happened one second after the Big Bang, one minute after, five minutes after, and so on. So, from where did this singularity come? What caused the singularity? What made it expand? “We don’t know,” they admit, “but we are still working on it.” This is what is passed off as science today.

Everything must have a cause, but cause-and-effect can only be taken back so far. Eventually, we must arrive at the cause that caused all other causes, and this cause cannot itself be caused. “Science” has no explanation for this, therefore hypotheses abound. In desperation, absurdities, like the “multiverse” hypothesis, arise to account for what cannot be proven in this universe. Since it cannot be proven in this universe, it must be true in another. The problem is that this universe is the only universe to which we have access to do science. There remains this nagging requirement for science called observation, and we cannot observe other universes, if indeed they do exist. Ours is the only universe we can observe. Our science is limited to what we can observe in this universe.

That brings us back to question of origins. How did our universe come to be? If nothing else, the Big Bang asserts that our universe must have had a beginning. But what caused it all? Reason demands that the original cause cannot itself have a cause. Our universe is no accident.

Where science fails us, the Bible provides a reasonable answer. Naturalists automatically reject this notion; however they offer nothing in its place that makes more sense. “In the beginning God …” (Genesis 1:1). Time, “the beginning,” was caused by God. The reader will note that nothing is presented before God, the Cause. God is the “uncaused Cause,” and the Scripture’s presentation of nothing prior to God expresses His eternal nature, His infiniteness. His eternal existence is the only reasonable and logical response to an infinite series of causes and effects. God is no accident. He is and always has been and ever will be. He is the eternal “I AM THAT I AM” (Exodus 3:14). John identifies Jesus as the eternal Creator (John 1:1-3), and later records the Lord’s self-identification as the Eternal One: “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end” (Revelation 1:18; 21:6), “I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last” (Revelation 1:11), “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last” (Revelation 22:13). He is the One, the initial Cause that started it all. Before Him nothing else existed.

Our universe is no accident; it had a cause – God the Creator. Our world, our earth, is no accident; it had a cause – God the Creator. You and I are no accidents. We have a Creator that fashioned us in His own image (Genesis 1:27), and loved us enough to give us the choice to accept or reject Him. Either choice produces eternal effects. If we choose to reject Him, that decision is eternal. If we choose to accept Him, that decision is eternal. The choice is no accident.

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