AppReasons

How Darwin Failed His Own Test

By:  Bob Davis

What has the past 150 years shown us about Darwin’s theory of evolution?

Like any good scientist, Charles Darwin made a prediction by which other scientists could test his theory in the future. In other words, he made Darwinism falsifiable—capable of being proved false. More than a century and a half later, we are in a position to judge whether his theory has indeed been falsified.1

Precursors vs. Sudden Appearances

Darwin packaged up his book On the Origin of Species shortly after its publication and sent it to the most renowned scientist of the time, Harvard geologist and paleontologist Louis Agassiz.2 After reading it, Agassiz informed Darwin that the fossil record did not support Darwin’s theory that all life began from a common ancestor and then proceeded through the process of natural selection, generating gradually more complex life-forms.

Agassiz pointed out that, instead, the fossil record was marked by the sudden appearance and disappearance of unrelated and different species. Moreover, many of the most complex life-forms appeared very early in the history of existence.

In a written response, Darwin acknowledged that if whole groups of species were to have indeed appeared suddenly, his theory would be proved false. Darwin wrote, “If numerous species belonging to the same genera or families have really started into life all at once, the fact would be fatal to the theory of descent with slow modification through natural selection.”3

The most disturbing fossil evidence against Darwinism in the mid-nineteenth century was the sudden geological appearance of a whole range of complex sea creatures in the Cambrian formation of Scotland. The Cambrian fossils date back to 530 million years ago and have no apparent predecessors, only very simple life-forms like sponges and unicellular animals.

However, Darwin remained confident that with continued fossil collection, paleontologists would find the precursors his theory demanded.

So how has this dispute between two great intellects of nineteenth-century science played out to-date?

The Fossil Record Now

The fossil record has increased by orders of magnitude. In fact, Cambrian animals—with all of their rich disparity—have been found all over the world, notably in British Columbia, China, Australia, and Greenland. Yet precursors to the Cambrian animals—outside of single-celled life and simple sponges—remain undiscovered.

Two prominent twentieth-century paleontologists, Niles Eldridge and Stephen Jay Gould, have admitted that stasis (a period of little or no evolutionary change) is the dominant characteristic of the fossil record. Gould called it “paleontology’s trade secret,” and “an embarrassing one at that.”4

Gould and Eldridge postulated a non-Darwinian, but naturalistic process to account for what the fossil record shows. The sudden appearance of new higher-order life-forms needed an explanation; Gould and Eldridge provided one: what they called “punctuated equilibrium.” Those who hold fast to the notion of very gradual incremental changes use the term “punk eek” to ridicule the idea that somehow major changes can occur quickly and not be a form of creationism.5

One of the richest Cambrian fossil discoveries is in the southern Chinese province of Kunming. Chinese paleontologists seem to be convinced that the gradual incremental changes postulated by Darwin just do not explain the Kunming fossils. This led one Chinese paleontologist to say, “In China we can criticize Darwin but not the government. In America you can criticize the government but not Darwin!”6

To be sure, Gould and Eldridge are not creationists, but they are part of a growing number of scientists who, like these Chinese paleontologists, are admitting that Darwin’s self-imposed test of his theory simply is not finding empirical support. Part of the reason that materialistic philosophy—which states that only the material or natural world is real and therefore everything can be explained in terms of molecules in motion—prevails in spite of the evidence is rooted in one definition of science. That definition allows no inference of non-materialistic causes to be considered.

Hence, when evidence from science points to a Creator, it is said to be “non-scientific” because it falls outside the bounds of the modern definition of “science.” This circular reasoning stands in contrast to the original impetus for science that follows the evidence wherever it leads.

Failing the Test

So how do the neo-Darwinists respond to the apparent failure of Darwin’s own test for his theory?

Some still have faith that the fossil record will eventually yield support for Darwinism, in spite of the huge and uniform sampling that says otherwise. Others claim that the soft body parts of the predecessors could not fossilize, and therefore the evidence has not been preserved. This later claim has been laid bare by the discovery of Cambrian-era fossilized soft tissue.7

Darwin put forth a test to his theory—namely that the sudden appearance of most of life’s major body plans or phyla in the Cambrian era would in time be shown to be part of a gradual progression of life’s increasing complexity. However, the absence of his predicted precursors remains, despite the passage of more than 150 years of intense investigations on all continents.

Although not the only flaw in Darwin’s theory, it is the one that he himself set forth as a critical test. And so far his theory has failed that test.

– See more at: http://www.exploregod.com/how-darwin-failed-his-own-test#sthash.LNziKiRS.dpuf

An Intelligent Defense of Intelligent Design: An Interview with Stephen Meyer

Stephen MeyerStephen Meyer attempts to explain the origin of life in a way that combines Biblical fidelity with scientific rigor.

For years, debates over the origin of life were framed as a fight between the growing scientific evidence for Darwinian evolution and what many believe are the plain teachings of the Bible about a literal seven-day creation event. But in recent years, a third option has emerged under the banner of “Intelligent Design” or ID for short. The ID movement attempts to combine Biblical fidelity with scientific rigor, and even though many scientists have criticized the movement as being unscientific, it’s hard to ignore the growing number of people embracing ID explanations for life on earth.

Stephen Meyer, founder and director of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, is a respected leader in the ID movement. He is author of Signature in the Cell, which uses genetics to argue for ID, and his newest book, Darwin’s Doubt tackles the most controversial aspect of Darwin’s theory of evolution: the rapid appearance of animal life 530 million years ago. Here we talk about what he believes are weaknesses in Darwinian explanations for the origin of life and what he thinks it will take to make an intelligent defense of Intelligent Design.

JM: For starters, will you describe the argument of your previous book, Signature in the Cell, and why it’s foundational for what you’re suggesting in Darwin’s Doubt?

SM: In Signature in the Cell, I explained that chemical evolutionary theories—theories that attempt to explain the origin of the first life from simpler non-living chemicals—have failed to do so. I also showed that these theories have failed in large part because they do not give an adequate explanation for the origin of the genetic information in DNA necessary to build the first living cell. Instead, I argued that Intelligent Design (ID) best explains the origin of that necessary information in part because of what we know from our uniform and repeated experience of what it takes (namely, intelligence) to generate new information—especially information that is encoded in a digital form.

In Darwin’s Doubt, I show that theories of biological evolution—theories that attempt to explain the origin of new forms of life from simpler pre-existing forms—also face an “information problem.” In particular, I show that events in the history of life such as the Cambrian Explosion, in which numerous novel forms of animal life arise in the fossil record, not only represent an explosion of biological form, but an explosion of biological information. I argue that the standard materialistic evolutionary mechanisms such as natural selection acting on random mutations do not account for this explosion of new information in the biosphere. Instead, I again point out that, as one information theorist put it, “the creation of information is habitually associated with conscious activity.”

JM: What was the inexplicable conundrum that Darwin recognized and acknowledged, and why does it matter?

SM: Darwin expressed a doubt about the ability of his theory to account for an event in the history of life known as the Cambrian Explosion. The Cambrian Explosion refers to an event in which most of the major animal groups appear abruptly in the fossil record without any apparent evolutionary precursors. Chordates such as fish, arthropods, various types of worms, mollusks (e.g., shellfish), and many other groups of animals, first appear in a geological “blink of an eye,” without any direct ancestors in the fossil record. Even Richard Dawkins has observed that the Cambrian animals looked as if “they were just planted there without any evolutionary history.”

JM: Did Darwin attempt an explanation, or was there simply a void in his theory of natural selection?

Darwin's DoubtSM: Darwin himself knew that the abrupt appearance of animals in the ancient fossil record posed a problem for his theory. He knew that his proposed mechanism of natural selection worked gradually by acting on “numerous, successive, slight modifications.”

But the Cambrian Explosion contradicted that expectation, since it showed diverse and complex animal body plans appearing abruptly, without any fossil record of their gradual evolution in lower Precambrian strata. Darwin acknowledged this problem in his On the Origin of Species, and said it presented a “valid argument against the views here entertained.”

Nevertheless, he suggested that perhaps future fossil discoveries would document the missing Precambrian ancestral fossils of the Cambrian animals. As I show in Darwin’s Doubt, however, fossil discoveries since Darwin’s time have actually intensified the mystery associated with the Cambrian Explosion—as has our growing knowledge from molecular biology, genetics and developmental biology about the importance of genetic and other forms of information to the origin and maintenance of animal life.

JM: And you believe the information necessary to build the Cambrian animal forms arose from an intelligent cause, rather than an undirected natural process?

SM: In Darwin’s Doubt I argue that there is good reason to infer the activity of a designing intelligence in the history of life. The DNA in all forms of life contains information in digital form that functions much like a software program. The development of animal life also contains other forms of information called epigenetic information, or information stored beyond the genome.

We know from experience that software comes from programmers. We know generally that information in whatever form we find it—whether inscribed in hieroglyphics, written in a book or encoded in radio signals—always arises from an intelligent source. So the discovery of information in the DNA molecule, and our realization that events such as the Cambrian Explosion required huge infusions of new information into the biosphere—the provides strong grounds for inferring that intelligence played a role in the history of life, even if we weren’t there to observe the first life or new animals coming into existence.

JM: How is Intelligent Design distinct from both Creationism and Darwinism?

SM: Contrary to media reports, Intelligent Design is not a religious-based idea, but instead an evidence-based scientific theory about life’s origins—one that challenges strictly materialistic views of evolution.

According to Darwinian biologists such as Oxford’s Richard Dawkins, living systems “give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” But for modern Darwinists, that appearance of design is entirely illusory. Why? Because they think the undirected processes of natural selection acting on random mutations can produce the intricate structures found in living organisms. In contrast, the theory of Intelligent Design holds that there are tell-tale features of living systems and the universe that are best explained by a designing intelligence. The theory does not challenge the idea of evolution (defined as change over time), or even common ancestry, but it does dispute Darwin’s idea that the cause of biological change is wholly blind and undirected. Intelligent Design, unlike Creationism, is not based on the Bible. Design is an inference from biological data, not a deduction from religious authority.

JM: Isn’t it clear by now that the scientific community has a consensus on evolution? And if so, doesn’t that matter?

SM: Truth in science is often achieved by challenging a consensus when new evidence suggests that a consensus view is wrong. In Darwin’s Doubt, I explain that the consensus that existed a generation ago, in favor of the still standard textbook version of evolutionary theory called Neo-Darwinism, has now fractured as evolutionary biologists themselves are now proposing numerous new theories of evolution.

I also show in my book that many of these theories are superior to the previous consensus view, but that they too fail to explain the origin of both the genetic and epigenetic information necessary to build the new animal life that arises in events such as the Cambrian Explosion. Into that dynamic situation in evolution biology in which there is currently no consensus about the cause or mechanism of macro-evolutionary innovation, I propose the theory of Intelligent Design as an explanation for the origin of the novel information necessary to build novel forms of animal life.

Why Evil Disproves Atheism

Gargoyle EvilAs Islamists continue to kill innocents, they provide more fuel for the oft-made atheist claim that religion is evil. Atheist Richard Dawkins condemned the recent attacks in France by tweeting, “No, all religions are NOT equally violent. Some have never been violent, some gave it up centuries ago. One religion conspicuously didn’t.”

Dawkins is right that some religions and religious people have consistently perpetrated evil. Atheists often use this fact to support atheism. However, the existence of evil turns out to be a bigger problem for atheists to explain than for theists. The kind of evil Dawkins and the rest of the civilized world abhor doesn’t disprove God—it disproves atheism.

While it’s commonly thought that only theists have to explain the existence of evil, the truth is every worldview does. Eastern pantheistic religions try to get around the problem by denying that evil even exists. Evil is an illusion, they say (and according to them, so are you!). Theists say evil is real and try to explain how evil and God can coexist. Atheists tend to be caught in the middle. In one breath they are claiming there is no good, evil or justice because only material things exist—we are just material molecular machines “dancing to the music” of our DNA (as Dawkins himself put it). In the next breath they are outraged at the great injustices and evil done by religious people in the name of God.

Well, atheists can’t have it both ways. Either evil exists or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t exist, then atheists should stop complaining about the “evil” things religious people have done because they haven’t really done any. They’ve just been “dancing to the music” of their DNA. If atheism is true, all behaviors are merely a matter of preference anyway. On the other hand, if evil actually does exist, then atheists have an even bigger problem. The existence of evil actually establishes the existence of God.

To explain why, we need to go back to Augustine who puzzled over the following argument:

  1. God created all things.

  2. Evil is a thing.

  3. Therefore, God created evil.

How could a good God create evil? If those first two premises are true, He did, and this is a God problem. So God must not be good after all. But then Augustine realized that the second premise is not true. While evil is real, it’s not a “thing.” Evil doesn’t exist on its own. It only exists as a lack or a deficiency in a good thing.

Evil is like rust in a car: If you take all of the rust out of a car, you have a better car; if you take the car out of the rust, you have nothing. Or you could say that evil is like a cut in your finger: If you take the cut out of your finger, you have a better finger; if you take the finger out of your cut, you have nothing. In other words, evil only makes sense against the backdrop of good. That’s why we often describe evil as negations of good things. We say someone is immoral, unjust, unfair, dishonest, etc.

We could put it this way: The shadows prove the sunshine. There can be sunshine without shadows, but there can’t be shadows without sunshine. In other words, there can be good without evil, but there can’t be evil without good.

So evil can’t exist unless good exists. But good can’t exist unless God exists. In other words, there can be no objective evil unless there is objective good, and there can be no objective good unless God exists. If evil is real—as the recent headlines from France plainly reveal—then God exists. The best evil can do is show there’s a devil out there, but it can’t disprove God. The very existence of evil boomerangs back to show that God exists.

C.S. Lewis was once an atheist who thought evil disproved God. He later realized he was stealing from God in order to argue against Him. He wrote, “[As an atheist] my argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?”

Stealing from God is what atheists tend to do when they complain about evil done in God’s name. Richard Dawkins is correct that religious people have done evil things, but his atheism affords him no objective standard by which to judge anything as good or evil. So he steals goodness from God while claiming He doesn’t exist. Dawkins has to sit in God’s lap to slap His face.

Just who is this God? Allah isn’t a candidate because, according to Islamic doctrine, Allah is arbitrary and thus can’t be the unchanging standard of good. The true God is the God of the Bible who is revealed as the unchanging ground of all goodness.

Richard Dawkins and other atheists might object, “But how can the God of the Bible be the standard of goodness? Doesn’t He do evil in the Old Testament? And why would a good God allow evil to continue?” Those are some of the many questions I address in my new book, Stealing From God: Why Atheists Need God to Make Their Case, from which this column was adapted. Look for more here in the coming weeks.

Dr. Frank Turek is a dynamic speaker and award-winning author or coauthor of four books: Stealing From God: Why Atheists Need God to Make Their Case, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, Correct, Not Politically Correct and Legislating Morality.

How The Passover Reveals Jesus Christ

Introduction

PassoverThe festival of the Passover has been celebrated by Jews for thousands of years. It is the retelling of the great story of how God redeemed the Jewish nation from enslavement in Egypt.1 The celebration itself was given to the Jews while they were still in Egypt.2 The original celebration centered around the Passover lamb, which was sacrificed and its blood put over the doorposts as a sign of faith, so that the Lord passed over the houses of the Jews during the last plague poured out on the Egyptians – the killing of every firstborn.3 To a large degree, the Passover lamb has been eliminated from the Passover festival (with the only remnant being the roasted lamb shank bone).4 The New Testament says that Jesus is our sacrificial Lamb.5 The Passover lamb was to be a “male without defect,”6 which is the same description given to Jesus.7 In addition, when the lamb was roasted and eaten, none of its bones were to be broken.8 This fact was also prophesized for the Messiah, whose bones were not to be broken.9 It was customary during crucifixion to break the leg bones of the person after a few hours in order to hasten their death. The only way a person could breathe when hanging on a cross was to push up with his legs, which was very exhausting. By breaking the legs, death followed soon by asphyxiation. However, in the case of Jesus, they broke the legs of the other two men, but did not break His, since He was already dead.10

Passover symbolism

Much of the symbolism of Jesus’ last Passover week is lost to us because we are unaware of the customs of the time. For example, Jesus came into the city of Jerusalem five days before the lamb was killed in the temple as the Passover sacrifice for the sins of the people of Israel. Five days before the lamb was to be sacrificed, it was chosen. Therefore, Jesus entered Jerusalem on lamb selection day as the lamb of God.11 The people did not understand the significance of this, since they greeted Him with palm branches12 and hailed Him as King,13shouting “Hosanna,”14 which means “save us.” However, they were not looking for a spiritual Savior, but a political savior. Palm branches were a symbol of freedom and defiance, since Simon Maccabeus had entered Jerusalem with that symbolism.15 Jesus’ reaction was to weep,16 since He realized that they did not understand the Messiah’s purpose in coming.

Passover sacrifice

The day Jesus was crucified was the day of the Passover celebration and the day that the Passover lamb was to be sacrificed. For the previous 1,200 years, the priest would blow the shophar (ram’s horn) at 3:00 p.m. – the moment the lamb was sacrificed, and all the people would pause to contemplate the sacrifice for sins on behalf of the people of Israel. At 3:00,17 when Jesus was being crucified, He said, “It is finished”18 – at the moment that the Passover lamb was sacrificed and the shophar was blown from the Temple. The sacrifice of the lamb of God was fulfilled at the hour that the symbolic animal sacrifice usually took place. At the same time, the veil of the Temple (a three-inch thick, several story high cloth that demarked the Holy of Holies19) tore from top to bottom20 – representing a removal of the separation between God and man. Fifty days later, on the anniversary of the giving of the law (Pentecost), God left the earthly temple to inhabit those who call on the name of Jesus through His Holy Spirit.21

Burial

The festival of unleavened bread began Friday evening (at sunset). As part of the festival, the Jews would take some of the grain – the “first fruits” of their harvest – to the Temple to offer as a sacrifice. In so doing, they were offering God all they had and trusting Him to provide the rest of the harvest. It was at this point that Jesus was buried – planted in the ground – as He said right before His death.22 Paul refers to Jesus as the first fruits of those raised from the dead in 1 Corinthians.23 As such, Jesus represents the fulfillment of God’s promise to provide the rest of the harvest – resurrection of those who follow the Messiah.

Resurrection

Unleavened BreadChristian symbolism in the Passover occurs early in the Seder (the Passover dinner). Three matzahs are put together (representing the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). The middle matzah is broken,24 wrapped in a white cloth, and hidden, representing the death and burial of Jesus.25 The matzah itself is designed to represent Jesus, since it is striped and pierced, which was prophesized by Isaiah, 26 David,27 and Zechariah.28Following the Seder meal, the “buried” matzah is “resurrected,” which was foretold in the prophecies of David.29

Christian Communion

It was during a Passover seder30 that Jesus proclaimed that the meal represented Himself and that He was instituting the New Covenant, which was foretold by Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Isaiah.31 The celebration of this covenant has become the ordinance of communion in the Christian Church. At the end of the meal, Jesus took the unleavened bread, broke it, and said that it represented His body.32 Then He took the cup of wine, which would have been the third cup of the Seder – the cup of redemption. He said that it was the new covenant in His blood “poured out for you.”33 It is through the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that we are declared clean before God, allowing those of us who choose to accept the pardon, to commune with Him – both now and forevermore through the eternal life He offers.

Conclusion

If you are a Christian, I encourage you to celebrate the Passover with your friends and neighbors. Our family has been doing this for the last six years and have used the celebration as a way of sharing the gospel of Christ in a fun and non-threatening manner. For more information on how you can celebrate your own Passover Seder, see the related pages below.

References:

  1. The entire story can be read in the book of Exodus

  2. See Exodus chapter 12.

  3. Then Moses summoned all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go at once and select the animals for your families and slaughter the Passover lamb. Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it into the blood in the basin and put some of the blood on the top and on both sides of the doorframe. Not one of you shall go out the door of his house until morning. When the LORD goes through the land to strike down the Egyptians, He will see the blood on the top and sides of the doorframe and will pass over that doorway, and he will not permit the destroyer to enter your houses and strike you down. (Exodus 12:21-23)

  4. The Passover lamb was still sacrificed in the first century, as indicated in the New testament – Then came the day of Unleavened Bread on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. (Luke 22:7)

  5. Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast–as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. (1 Corinthians 5:7)

    The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! (John 1:29)

    When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God!” (John 1:36)

    For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. (1 Peter 1:18-19)

    I answered, “Sir, you know.” And he said, “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. (Revelation 7:14)

    “And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even to death. (Revelation 12:11)

  6. The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats. (Exodus 12:5)

  7. For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. (1 Peter 1:18-19)

  8. “It must be eaten inside one house; take none of the meat outside the house. Do not break any of the bones. (Exodus 12:46)

  9. He keeps all his bones; not one of them is broken. (Psalm 34:20)

  10. The soldiers therefore came, and broke the legs of the first man, and of the other man who was crucified with Him; but coming to Jesus, when they saw that He was already dead, they did not break His legs;… For these things came to pass, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, “Not a bone of Him shall be broken.” (John 19:32, 33, 36)

  11. The next day he saw Jesus coming to him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! (John 1:29)

  12. On the next day the great multitude who had come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, took the branches of the palm trees, and went out to meet Him, and began to cry out, “Hosanna! BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD, even the King of Israel.” (John 12:12-13)

    And most of the multitude spread their garments in the road, and others were cutting branches from the trees, and spreading them in the road. (Matthew 21:8)

  13. saying, “BLESSED IS THE KING WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD; Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” (Luke 19:38)

    And the multitudes going before Him, and those who followed after were crying out, saying, “Hosanna to the Son of David; BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD; Hosanna in the highest!” (Matthew 21:9)

  14. And the multitudes going before Him, and those who followed after were crying out, saying, “Hosanna to the Son of David; BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD; Hosanna in the highest!” (Matthew 21:9)

    And those who went before, and those who followed after, were crying out, “Hosanna! BLESSED IS HE WHO COMES IN THE NAME OF THE LORD; Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David; Hosanna in the highest!” (Mark 11:9-10)

  15. Simon Maccabeus entered the Akra at Jerusalem after its capture, “with thanksgiving, and branches of palm trees, and with harps, and cymbals, and with viols, and hymns, and songs: because there was destroyed a great enemy out of Israel” (1 Maccabees 13:51) (see also 2 Maccabees 10:7).

  16. And when He approached, He saw the city and wept over it, (Luke 19:41)

  17. And about the ninth hour [3:00 p.m.] Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “ELI, ELI, LAMA SABACHTHANI?” that is, “MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAST THOU FORSAKEN ME?”… And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice, and yielded up His spirit. (Matthew 27:46, 50) (see also Mark 15:34-37, Luke 23:44-46)

  18. When Jesus therefore had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished!” And He bowed His head, and gave up His spirit. (John 19:30)

  19. And behind the second veil, there was a tabernacle which is called the Holy of Holies, (Hebrews 9:3)

  20. And behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, and the earth shook; and the rocks were split, (Matthew 27:51)

    And the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. (Mark 15:38)

    the sun being obscured; and the veil of the temple was torn in two. (Luke 23:45)

  21. Acts chapter 2.

  22. And Jesus answered them, saying, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains by itself alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. (John 12:23-24)

  23. But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep. (1 Corinthians 15:20)

  24. And when He had given thanks, He brake it, and said, “Take, eat: this is My body, which isbroken for you: this do in remembrance of Me.” (1 Corinthians 11:24)

  25. And so they took the body of Jesus, and bound it in linen wrappings with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews. (John 19:40)

  26. But he was pierced through for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and by his stripes we are healed. (Isaiah 53:5)

  27. For dogs have surrounded me; A band of evildoers has encompassed me; They pierced my hands and my feet. (Psalm 22:16)

  28. “And I will pour out on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the Spirit of grace and of supplication, so that they will look on Me whom they have pierced; and they will mourn for Him, as one mourns for an only son, and they will weep bitterly over Him, like the bitter weeping over a first-born. (Zechariah 12:10)

  29. For Thou wilt not abandon my soul to Sheol; Neither wilt Thou allow Thy Holy One to undergo decay. (Psalm 16:10)

     O LORD, Thou hast brought up my soul from Sheol; Thou hast kept me alive, that I should not go down to the pit. (Psalm 30:3)

     But God will redeem my soul from the power of Sheol; for He will receive me. Selah. (Psalm 49:15)

     I shall not die, but live, And tell of the works of the LORD. (Psalm 118:17)

  30. And He said to them, “I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; (Luke 22:15)

  31. “Behold, days are coming,” declares the LORD, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD. “But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the LORD, “I will put My law within them, and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. (Jeremiah 31:31-33)

    “And I shall give them one heart, and shall put a new spirit within them. And I shall take the heart of stone out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in My statutes and keep My ordinances, and do them. Then they will be My people, and I shall be their God. (Ezekiel 11:19-20)

    “I am the LORD, I have called you in righteousness, I will also hold you by the hand and watch over you, And I will appoint you as a covenant to the people, As a light to the nations, (Isaiah 42:6)

  32. While they were eating, Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat; this is my body.” Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” (Matthew 26:26-28)

  33. In the same way, after the supper He took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is poured out for you. (Luke 22:20)

http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/passover.html

Hell And Heaven

By Tim Keller

Hell and heaven essentially are our freely chosen identities going on forever. In other words, Christianity believes that people have a soul that lives forever, and therefore, a process that begins in our soul now can go on forever.

For example, take self-centeredness. As we know, the more self-centered people get, the more miserable and the more in denial they become. That is to say they blame everybody else for their problems. And that is part of what self-centeredness is – you are wise in your own eyes, you can’t take the blame for anything, nothing is ever your fault. Hell is a self-centered ego going on for a billion years.

God, according to Romans 1, lets people have what they most want – and hell is simply serving yourself, going on forever. Hell is God giving you the life you want, on into eternity.

Therefore, in a sense, nobody ever goes to hell in the Christian understanding unless they want to. People go to heaven because they love God and want to submit to him. People go to hell because they want to be away from God, because they do not want somebody telling them how to live their life. They want to live their own lives their way. Hell is separation from God. And, therefore, nobody goes to hell except people who want to go there.

In some ways, the fairest understanding of the afterlife is the Christian one, which says God gives you what you want. If you want to live with God forever, that’s heaven, and you get it. If you want to be your own person, your own savior, your own lord, that’s hell, and you get that – and you stay wanting it; you do not suddenly change your mind.

In Ezekiel 18:30 God says, ‘I will judge you, each one according to his ways.’ But the verse goes on with God pleading with his people: ‘Repent! Turn away from all your offenses… Why will you die?… I take no pleasure in the death of anyone… Repent and live!’ (Ezekiel 18:30-32).

God’s justice is active, not passive, and when we violate it God will judge. But what these verses also show is that God wants people to repent and turn to him – that he does not want anyone to perish.

It sounds open-minded to say: I believe that any good person can find God, not just Christians. but the premise behind that statement is that good people find God and bad people do not. There are two problems with the premise. First, it holds out no hope for bad people, and lots of us know deep down that we have not lived up to even our own moral standards. Second, it misunderstands Christians’ beliefs. It assumes that Christians believe that they are going to heaven because they are good, and that is not true at all.

Christians believe that no one goes to heaven or hell by being compliant with Christian ethics – by being moral and good, or not. The essence of sin is loving anything more than the true God, and by essentially being our own ‘god’ – that is, trusting ultimately in our own wisdom and ability. Even if you believe in God and are very good and moral, you may be doing it as a way to earn your own salvation, so that God will be obligated to bless and help you, and take you to heaven. The fact is, all of us – religious and irreligious, moral and immoral – are trying to control our own lives rather than rely on God. Everyone is doing this and we will not ‘find God’ until we admit this spiritual condition and seek pardon and change through Jesus. Our eternal destiny is dependent not on being good but on our response to the grace of God and to Christ’s death on a cross in our place, and on our willingness to admit that we are cut off from God because of the pride and self-centeredness of our hearts.

8 Reasons Why I Believe That Jesus Rose From The Dead – John Piper

1. Jesus himself testified to his coming resurrection from the dead.

Jesus spoke openly about what would happen to him: crucifixion and then resurrection from the dead. “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again” (Mark8:31; see also Matthew 17:22; Luke 9:22). Those who consider the resurrection of Christ unbelievable will probably say that Jesus was deluded or (more likely) that the early church put these statements in his mouth to make him teach the falsehood that they themselves conceived. But those who read the Gospels and come to the considered conviction that the one who speaks so compellingly through these witnesses is not the figment of foolish imagination will be unsatisfied with this effort to explain away Jesus’ own testimony to his resurrection from the dead.

This is especially true in view of the fact that the words which predict the resurrection are not only the simple straightforward words quoted above, but also the very oblique and indirect words which are far less likely to be the simple invention of deluded disciples. For example, two separate witnesses testify in two very different ways to Jesus’ statement during his lifetime that if his enemies destroyed the temple (of his body), he would build it again in three days (John 2:19; Mark 14:58; cf. Matthew 26:61). He also spoke illusively of the “sign of Jonah” — three days in the heart of the earth (Matthew 12:39; Matthew 16:4). And he hinted at it again in Matthew 21:42 — “The very stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner.” On top of his own witness to the coming resurrection, his accusers said that this was part of Jesus’ claim: “Sir, we remember how that impostor said, while he was still alive, ‘After three days I will rise'” (Matthew 27:63).

Our first evidence of the resurrection, therefore, is that Jesus himself spoke of it. The breadth and nature of the sayings make it unlikely that a deluded church made these up. And the character of Jesus himself, revealed in these witnesses, has not been judged by most people to be a lunatic or a deceiver.

2. The tomb was empty on Easter.

The earliest documents claim this: “When they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus” (Luke 24:3). And the enemies of Jesus confirmed it by claiming that the disciples had stolen the body (Matthew 28:13). The dead body of Jesus could not be found. There are four possible ways to account for this.

2.1 His foes stole the body. If they did (and they never claimed to have done so), they surely would have produced the body to stop the successful spread of the Christian faith in the very city where the crucifixion occurred. But they could not produce it.

2.2 His friends stole the body. This was an early rumor (Matthew 28:11-15). Is it probable? Could they have overcome the guards at the tomb? More important, would they have begun to preach with such authority that Jesus was raised, knowing that he was not? Would they have risked their lives and accepted beatings for something they knew was a fraud?

2.3 Jesus was not dead, but only unconscious when they laid him in the tomb. He awoke, removed the stone, overcame the soldiers, and vanished from history after a few meetings with his disciples in which he convinced them he was risen from the dead. Even the foes of Jesus did not try this line. He was obviously dead. The Romans saw to that. The stone could not be moved by one man from within who had just been stabbed in the side by a spear and spent six hours nailed to a cross.

2.4 God raised Jesus from the dead. This is what he said would happen. It is what the disciples said did happen. But as long as there is a remote possibility of explaining the resurrection naturalistically, modern people say we should not jump to a supernatural explanation. Is this reasonable? I don’t think so. Of course, we don’t want to be gullible. But neither do we want to reject the truth just because it’s strange. We need to be aware that our commitments at this point are much affected by our preferences — either for the state of affairs that would arise from the truth of the resurrection, or for the state of affairs that would arise from the falsehood of the resurrection. If the message of Jesus has opened you to the reality of God and the need of forgiveness, for example, then anti-supernatural dogma might lose its power over your mind. Could it be that this openness is not prejudice for the resurrection, but freedom from prejudice against it?

3. The disciples were almost immediately transformed from men who were hopeless and fearful after the crucifixion (Luke 24:21, John 20:19) into men who were confident and bold witnesses of the resurrection (Acts 2:24, Acts 3:15, Acts 4:2).

Their explanation of this change was that they had seen the risen Christ and had been authorized to be his witnesses (Acts 2:32). The most popular competing explanation is that their confidence was owing to hallucinations. There are numerous problems with such a notion. The disciples were not gullible, but level-headed skeptics both before and after the resurrection (Mark 9:32, Luke 24:11, John 20:8-9). Moreover, is the deep and noble teaching of those who witnessed the risen Christ the stuff of which hallucinations are made? What about Paul’s great letter to the Romans? I personally find it hard to think of this giant intellect and deeply transparent soul as deluded or deceptive, and he claimed to have seen the risen Christ.

4. Paul claimed that, not only had he seen the risen Christ, but that 500 others had seen him also, and many were still alive when he made this public claim.

“Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:6). What makes this so relevant is that this was written to Greeks who were skeptical of such claims when many of these witnesses were still alive. So it was a risky claim if it could be disproved by a little firsthand research.

5. The sheer existence of a thriving, empire-conquering early Christian church supports the truth of the resurrection claim.

The church spread on the power of the testimony that Jesus was raised from the dead and that God had thus made him both Lord and Christ (Acts 2:36). The Lordship of Christ over all nations is based on his victory over death. This is the message that spread all over the world. Its power to cross cultures and create one new people of God was a strong testimony of its truth.

6. The Apostle Paul’s conversion supports the truth of the resurrection.

He argues to a partially unsympathetic audience in Galatians 1:11-17 that his gospel comes from the risen Jesus Christ, not from men. His argument is that before his Damascus Road experience when he saw the risen Jesus, he was violently opposed to the Christian faith (Acts 9:1). But now, to everyone’s astonishment, he is risking his life for the gospel (Acts 9:24-25). His explanation: The risen Jesus appeared to him and authorized him to spearhead the Gentile mission (Acts 26:15-18). Can we credit such a testimony? This leads to the next argument.

7. The New Testament witnesses do not bear the stamp of dupes or deceivers.

How do you credit a witness? How do you decide whether to believe a person’s testimony? The decision to give credence to a person’s testimony is not the same as completing a mathematical equation. The certainty is of a different kind, yet can be just as firm (I trust my wife’s testimony that she is faithful). When a witness is dead, we can base our judgment of him only on the content of his writings and the testimonies of others about him. How do Peter and John and Matthew and Paul stack up?

In my judgment (and at this point we can live authentically only by our own judgment—Luke 12:57), these men’s writings do not read like the works of gullible, easily deceived or deceiving men. Their insights into human nature are profound. Their personal commitment is sober and carefully stated. Their teachings are coherent and do not look like the invention of unstable men. The moral and spiritual standard is high. And the lives of these men are totally devoted to the truth and to the honor of God.

8. There is a self-authenticating glory in the gospel of Christ’s death and resurrection as narrated by the biblical witnesses.

The New Testament teaches that God sent the Holy Spirit to glorify Jesus as the Son of God. Jesus said, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth…. He will glorify me” (John16:13). The Holy Spirit does not do this by telling us that Jesus rose from the dead. He does it by opening our eyes to see the self-authenticating glory of Christ in the narrative of his life and death and resurrection. He enables us to see Jesus as he really was, so that he is irresistibly true and beautiful. The apostle stated the problem of our blindness and the solution like this: “The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God…. For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:4, 6).

A saving knowledge of Christ crucified and risen is not the mere result of right reasoning about historical facts. It is the result of spiritual illumination to see those facts for what they really are: a revelation of the truth and glory of God in the face of Christ — who is the same yesterday today and forever.

Pastor John

By John Piper. © Desiring God. Website: www.desiringGod.org. Email: [email protected]. Toll Free: 1.888.346.4700.

Why Evil Disproves Atheism

Why Evil Disproves Atheism

Gargoyle EvilAs Islamists continue to kill innocents, they provide more fuel for the oft-made atheist claim that religion is evil. Atheist Richard Dawkins condemned the recent attacks in France by tweeting, “No, all religions are NOT equally violent. Some have never been violent, some gave it up centuries ago. One religion conspicuously didn’t.”

Dawkins is right that some religions and religious people have consistently perpetrated evil. Atheists often use this fact to support atheism. However, the existence of evil turns out to be a bigger problem for atheists to explain than for theists. The kind of evil Dawkins and the rest of the civilized world abhor doesn’t disprove God—it disproves atheism.

While it’s commonly thought that only theists have to explain the existence of evil, the truth is every worldview does. Eastern pantheistic religions try to get around the problem by denying that evil even exists. Evil is an illusion, they say (and according to them, so are you!). Theists say evil is real and try to explain how evil and God can coexist. Atheists tend to be caught in the middle. In one breath they are claiming there is no good, evil or justice because only material things exist—we are just material molecular machines “dancing to the music” of our DNA (as Dawkins himself put it). In the next breath they are outraged at the great injustices and evil done by religious people in the name of God.

Well, atheists can’t have it both ways. Either evil exists or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t exist, then atheists should stop complaining about the “evil” things religious people have done because they haven’t really done any. They’ve just been “dancing to the music” of their DNA. If atheism is true, all behaviors are merely a matter of preference anyway. On the other hand, if evil actually does exist, then atheists have an even bigger problem. The existence of evil actually establishes the existence of God.

To explain why, we need to go back to Augustine who puzzled over the following argument:

  1. God created all things.

  2. Evil is a thing.

  3. Therefore, God created evil.

How could a good God create evil? If those first two premises are true, He did, and this is a God problem. So God must not be good after all. But then Augustine realized that the second premise is not true. While evil is real, it’s not a “thing.” Evil doesn’t exist on its own. It only exists as a lack or a deficiency in a good thing.

Evil is like rust in a car: If you take all of the rust out of a car, you have a better car; if you take the car out of the rust, you have nothing. Or you could say that evil is like a cut in your finger: If you take the cut out of your finger, you have a better finger; if you take the finger out of your cut, you have nothing. In other words, evil only makes sense against the backdrop of good. That’s why we often describe evil as negations of good things. We say someone is immoral, unjust, unfair, dishonest, etc.

We could put it this way: The shadows prove the sunshine. There can be sunshine without shadows, but there can’t be shadows without sunshine. In other words, there can be good without evil, but there can’t be evil without good.

So evil can’t exist unless good exists. But good can’t exist unless God exists. In other words, there can be no objective evil unless there is objective good, and there can be no objective good unless God exists. If evil is real—as the recent headlines from France plainly reveal—then God exists. The best evil can do is show there’s a devil out there, but it can’t disprove God. The very existence of evil boomerangs back to show that God exists.

C.S. Lewis was once an atheist who thought evil disproved God. He later realized he was stealing from God in order to argue against Him. He wrote, “[As an atheist] my argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?”

Stealing from God is what atheists tend to do when they complain about evil done in God’s name. Richard Dawkins is correct that religious people have done evil things, but his atheism affords him no objective standard by which to judge anything as good or evil. So he steals goodness from God while claiming He doesn’t exist. Dawkins has to sit in God’s lap to slap His face.

Just who is this God? Allah isn’t a candidate because, according to Islamic doctrine, Allah is arbitrary and thus can’t be the unchanging standard of good. The true God is the God of the Bible who is revealed as the unchanging ground of all goodness.

Richard Dawkins and other atheists might object, “But how can the God of the Bible be the standard of goodness? Doesn’t He do evil in the Old Testament? And why would a good God allow evil to continue?” Those are some of the many questions I address in my new book, Stealing From God: Why Atheists Need God to Make Their Case, from which this column was adapted. Look for more here in the coming weeks.

Dr. Frank Turek is a dynamic speaker and award-winning author or coauthor of four books: Stealing From God: Why Atheists Need God to Make Their Case, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, Correct, Not Politically Correct and Legislating Morality.

 

You Can’t Avoid the ‘WHY’ Question

Tim Keller Picture  WE LIVE IN A TIME IN WHICH

              YOU CAN’T AVOID THE ‘WHY’ QUESTION

I’ve heard plenty of Christians try to answer the why question by going back to the what. “You have to believe because Jesus is the Son of God.” But that’s answering the why with more what. Increasingly we live in a time in which you can’t avoid the why question. Just giving the what (for example, a vivid gospel presentation) worked in the days when the cultural institutions created an environment in which Christianity just felt true or at least honorable. But in a post-Christendom society, in the marketplace of ideas, you have to explain why this is true, or people will just dismiss it. – Tim Keller

I’m Not A Christian Because It Works For Me

J Warner Wallact PictureAt the age of thirty-five, it seemed like I had everything I could possibly want. I’d graduated at the top of my class in my undergraduate and graduate programs, earned the honor recruit award at the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Academy and was in an incredible job assignment, working as a member of a five man career-criminal surveillance team. I had been with my wife for eighteen years and we had a great family. We just purchased our second home in a community I had admired since childhood. Nothing could have been better. This was the status and condition of my life when I walked into a Christian church for the first time. 

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I’M NOT A CHRISTIAN BECAUSE IT WORKS FOR ME