Category: Essay

Stardust

Our words affirm who we think we are.

Beyond their truth values, they are powerful spells. They bless. They curse. Though others might get in the way, we ourselves are the ones who are blessed or defiled by what comes out of our own mouths.1

A song written by Joni Mitchell called Woodstock2 in 1969 influenced me through the early 1970s. In the final refrain is a declaration of what Mitchell thought we were.

We are stardust
Billion year old carbon

However, as I’ve come to realize, there is no natural way that we could be stardust and as a metaphor the idea is sentimental nonsense.

There are those who fantasize how that stardust to man might have happened, but the only thing they proclaim is their rebellion against a Creator. Dust from a supernova cannot get back together again no matter how often one waves a magic wand – or a professor’s hand – insisting on billions of years of evolution.

And yet, back in the 1970s, I had no problem believing such mythology. I had no more problem with it than an ancient Greek would have had with Zeus or a Hindu with Krishna. Those were the words spoken to me and those were the words I chose to listen to. Today, I repent of that misleading idolatry.

That our bodies come from the earth is true.3 However, the dust of the earth has never been stardust no more than it has ever been pixie dust.

The words we speak and the words we listen to matter. I can testify – first hand – that God is not mocked. What we sow we shall reap.4

I can also testify that repentance brings more joy than delusion, rebellion and disobedience5.

  1. Matthew 15:17-20 KJV – 17 Do not ye yet understand, that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught? 18 But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. 19 For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: 20 These are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man. ↩︎
  2. https://jonimitchell.com/music/lyricsprint.cfm?id=75 ↩︎
  3. Genesis 2:7 KJV – 7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. ↩︎
  4. Galatians 6:7-8 KJV – 7 Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. 8 For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. ↩︎
  5. Luke 15:10 KJV – 10 Likewise, I say unto you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth. ↩︎

Biblical Prayer

Matthew 6:10 KJV – Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.

Biblical prayer is a command spoken to the earth that the Lord’s will be done throughout it.

That includes not merely the problems we face, but ourselves as well.

Matthew 6:7 KJV – 7 But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.

Prayer is not a powerless, showy, vain speaking.

Prayer is our thoughts and words confirmed by our actions conforming only to the Lord’s will, not to our own.

When we get our thoughts, words and actions in line with the Lord’s will we pray effortlessly and without ceasing, because we then no longer know how to do anything else but insist that the Father’s kingdom come and that His will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Holes in the Net

Christian apologists who accept evolution do not realize how huge the holes are in their gospel nets.

What they don’t see is that the Bible offers not only a viable explanation of the universe we live in, but it offers the only viable explanation for it. The others are impossible modern mythologies masquerading as scientific theories.

The problem for the atheist is that one would have to accept the God of the Bible for the biblical explanation to be viable especially with the age of the universe being less than 8000 years.

  • But isn’t the universe billions of years old?
    Under Newtonian physics, perhaps, but not under relativity physics. If relativity is true, distant starlight can no longer be used as a clock.1
  • But aren’t there fossils half a billion years old?
    Radioactive decay is not a clock either. If it were then all of the rates of decay, including erosion rates and biological decay that we notice today, would have to line up. That dinosaur fossils have soft tissue2 still in them suggests – no, it insists – that they are much, much younger than that.
  • But isn’t humanity hundreds of thousands of years old?
    Historical records only go back about 5000 years. Let that sink in. That length of time is what one would expect given a global flood occurring about 3300 BC. Real people leave historical records. The existence and age of these historical records confirm the biblical chronology that the universe is less than 8000 years old3 and that there was a global catastrophe about 5300 years ago.

But that’s ridiculous! Once you realize that it is not, you will start taking the Bible seriously enough to mend the holes in the net.

______

In a 13 minute video Calvin Smith presented arguments every Christian apologist who still accepts evolution needs to hear. Atheists already know these arguments: any god who would use the cruel and destructive means of elimination known as evolution to bring about creation is unloving and morally suspect. Christian morals should make one reject the very god those apologists witlessly try to promote.

Smith described Christian apologists who accept evolution as casting gospel nets with holes in them.

  1. The reason relativity doesn’t allow the speed of light to be used as a clock to measure the age of the universe is due to the conventionality of simultaneity thesis which Veritasium explained rather well. Allen Janis’s article Conventionality of Simultaneity summarizes the thesis in more detail providing additional references. Jason Lisle applied it to solve the distant starlight problem of creationism in his paper Anisotropic Synchrony Convention, Answers Research Journal, 2010. Bottom line: We cannot tell how old the universe is by knowing the two-way speed of light and the estimated distance of a celestial object unless we go back to Newtonian physics. ↩︎
  2. Creation Ministries International provided a one-minute video summarizing the significance of the discovery of soft tissue in fossils: those fossils must have been laid down recently. That soft tissue exists in fossils at all marks the end of the evolutionary worldview unless one is addicted to that worldview much like those who promote a flat earth are addicted to theirs. ↩︎
  3. There are various biblical chronologies because there are multiple manuscript traditions. The ultimate original source is lost, but one can piece it together using parts from each of these traditions. The chronology I currently find most convincing comes from the Associates for Biblical Research. ↩︎

He Made the Stars Also

If the universe began with an explosion, how did all of that exploded stuff come back together again to form even one star? If a star should explode, how would the mess it made clean itself up to become another star?

Not even gravity can put those explosions back together again.

There’s more truth in the nursery rhyme about Humpty Dumpty than there is in the mythology of modern cosmology with its big bangs and stars forming from cosmic dust clouds.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
couldn’t put Humpty together again.

One of the blessings of our universe is that things don’t naturally compress through gravity to the point that a thermonuclear reaction starts. If they did, the waters over the earth (along with all of the land) would have collapsed to the center of what once was the earth long ago.

The reason stuff like that doesn’t happen is because of hydrostatic equilibrium. Gravity draws things together. Sure, but an opposing outward pressure keeps stuff from collapsing beyond an equilibrium point. If it didn’t, we wouldn’t be here.

Some claim that if there were a multiverse, an infinite number of universes all starting with explosions, then at least one of them would have to look like ours. Wrong. Blow things up an infinite number of times (or more) and none of those explosions, because of hydrostatic equilibrium, would turn into a universe with planets and stars.

Every one of those exploded verses in that multiverse would remain a mess forever.

______

It is written.

Road to Emmaus

The following is a 25 minute video reenacting the journey on the road to Emmaus described in Luke 24.

Luke 24:13-35 KJV – 13 And, behold, two of them went that same day to a village called Emmaus, which was from Jerusalem about threescore furlongs.
14 And they talked together of all these things which had happened.
15 And it came to pass, that, while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus himself drew near, and went with them.
16 But their eyes were holden that they should not know him.
17 And he said unto them, What manner of communications are these that ye have one to another, as ye walk, and are sad?
18 And the one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answering said unto him, Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come to pass there in these days?
19 And he said unto them, What things? And they said unto him, Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people:
20 And how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death, and have crucified him.
21 But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel: and beside all this, to day is the third day since these things were done.
22 Yea, and certain women also of our company made us astonished, which were early at the sepulchre;
23 And when they found not his body, they came, saying, that they had also seen a vision of angels, which said that he was alive.
24 And certain of them which were with us went to the sepulchre, and found it even so as the women had said: but him they saw not.
25 Then he said unto them, O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken:
26 Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?
27 And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.
28 And they drew nigh unto the village, whither they went: and he made as though he would have gone further.
29 But they constrained him, saying, Abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent. And he went in to tarry with them.
30 And it came to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them.
31 And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and he vanished out of their sight.
32 And they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?
33 And they rose up the same hour, and returned to Jerusalem, and found the eleven gathered together, and them that were with them,
34 Saying, The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon.
35 And they told what things were done in the way, and how he was known of them in breaking of bread.

Does Starlight Take Billions of Years To Reach Earth?

I posted the following as a comment on this video:

This is the clearest presentation of the distant starlight (non)problem that I have heard to date. We cannot use distant starlight to tell us how old the universe is given relativity physics. So, we will have to find other evidence to estimate the age of the universe. Radioactive decay might be one, but those rates aren’t reliable based on conflicting erosion rates, the discovery of soft tissue in fossils and the rates of dispersion of decay particles from zircon crystals. What we are left with is historical evidence, but that takes us back only about 5000 years which is surprisingly close to the time of the flood in the Septuagint chronology.

The video is almost two hours long, but John Hartnett does a good job of describing three rejected solutions to the distant starlight problem to arrive at the anisotropic synchrony convention proposed by Jason Lisle.

Is Being `Slain in the Spirit` Biblical?

In Pentecostal religious traditions being slain in the spirit is the ritual of someone falling over backwards when a leader yells, waves his hands or touches the person. Over the last two years I have attended various churches where such rituals were practiced on a regular basis.

In searching for biblical justifications for these practices I found the assessment of the Got Questions site informative: “The biblical instances [justifying these practices] were few and far between, and they occurred only rarely in the lives of a few people.”

However, I myself have fallen down. Admittedly, that happened for real only once. I was not expecting to fall. I had no intention of falling. I did not know I was falling. It was totally involuntary. Suddenly I found myself looking up from the floor wondering how I got there.

When that happened it was a kind of sign and wonder, much like a divine healing would be, but without the healing. It also made me suspect that the minister had superpowers. Weeks later I stood in that same minister’s prayer line. He did not make me fall like he did before as I expected he would, but I did go down in what is known as a courtesy fall. As I was going down I realized that this minister didn’t have the superpowers I should have never expected him to have had in the first place.

Although signs and wonders are important, the Bible also tells us to be wary of them. They may be a sign of false prophets or of the last days.

Matthew 24:23-24 KJV – 23 Then if any man shall say unto you, Lo, here is Christ, or there; believe it not. 24 For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.

Since that time I fell, I have been watching people fall over backwards, caught by an usher and covered with a cloth. I have also watched a few who defiantly refused to fall down, even as a courtesy.

At the moment, I am more aligned with those who refuse to fall. My reason for this is, as the Got Questions site confirmed, I don’t see much biblical justification for the practice and such signs and wonders may be used for deceptive purposes.

There is, on the contrary, biblical justification for standing, not for being slain by some “spirit”. The most powerful verses that come to mind are from Ephesians 6 where Paul tells us to put on the whole armor of God and to stand:

Ephesians 6:10-13 KJV – 10 Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might. 11 Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. 12 For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. 13 Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.

As warriors against the rulers of darkness we are called to stand, stand, stand always being prepared to exercise dominion over, without ever capitulating to, that defeated, demonic darkness.

So, stand. Don’t fall. If for some spooky reason you find yourself on the floor involuntarily, get up and stand.

Biblical Genealogy

I found the following video on Robert Carter’s site Biblical Genetics. The key take-away from this video is that the ultimate benefit of all of the genealogical data in the Bible was to trace the ancestry of Jesus back to Adam.

Most people (including myself) skip over the biblical genealogies unless they know what to look for. Carter says it is like looking for a fossil in a river basin. If you know what to look for you can find an amazing fossil. If you don’t, well, there are plenty of other things to enjoy.

Robert Carter and Chris Hardy were the authors of a paper on Creation Ministries International that I keep going back to called The biblical minimum and maximum age of the earth. The creation year of the minimum age supported by at least one biblical manuscript tradition is 3822 BC. The creation year of the maximum age is 5665 BC. That’s a difference of 1,843 years.

Many Christians support the younger age close to James Ussher’s chronology with a creation date of 4004 BC. Since that was a bit over 6000 years ago many of them also get tempted by speculations of the end of the age.

Early Christians along with Henry B. Smith, Jr at the Associates for Biblical Research support an older creation year of around 5500 BC. Based on this chronology the rabbinic tradition of the Messiah coming during the 6th millennium has already been fulfilled by Jesus. Smith, Jr’s argument in favor of the older age is available at the 2018 International Conference on Creationism called The case for the Septuagint’s chronology in Genesis 5 and 11. It’s another one of the papers I keep going back to.

At the moment, I favor Smith, Jr’s view, but I am a recent supporter of creationism. I am still learning. I only began taking the Bible seriously, that is, more seriously than, say, the Bhagavad Gita, about five years ago.

Over five years ago, I would have thought the earth was a gazillion years old. Why? Because that’s what I was told. My religious traditions were a mix of Catholic Teilhard de Chardin new age leaning mysticism and Protestant William Lane Craig atheist leaning rationalizations. Don’t worry if you aren’t familiar with those two names. I wish I weren’t as well.

When I was about 10 years old I remember telling my aunt that chickens came from dinosaurs. Why? Because that’s what I was told. Looking back on that incident as an adult who has now listened to many children talk I imagine she thought I was a cute kid, but stupid.

I realize today that she was right about the stupid part. Or, better put, deceived part, but then those telling me the “truth” were deceived as well. They are not the enemy. I forgive them. Today I have more important things to do like taking back all that stolen life, stolen hope, stolen joy and stolen peace.

Natural or Supernatural

In trying to find out how far back the idea of the natural went the search engine offered a link to a paper by a naturalist philosopher, David Papineau, who described philosophers like himself as people who were committed to the belief that reality contained only what is natural, nothing supernatural.

Papineau wrote1,

They [naturalist philosophers] urged that reality is exhausted by nature, containing nothing “supernatural”, and that the scientific method should be used to investigate all areas of reality, including the “human spirit”…

His argument could be easily rejected. All I’d have to do is reject any definition of natural that could exhaust reality. Indeed, I’m more inclined to feel that reality is exhausted by the supernatural rather than the other way around.

A Miraculous Raising From the Dead

Besides Papineau, I was also listening today to Curry Blake give a testimony during his Divine Healing Technician Training lectures. Before he was involved in his healing ministry his first daughter died when she was three and years later another daughter fell over twenty feet onto concrete. He could tell she was dead, but he carried her and then stood her up against the wall commanding her over and over again: In the name of Jesus you will live and not die.

And then she came back.

She said she was hungry. He gave her only a small piece of bread, because her mouth was crushed in the fall. When he took her to the hospital they said she had been dead for 45 minutes.

Blake made an interesting comment (about 52:50 in the video) explaining why he didn’t take his daughter to the hospital when he realized that she was dead:

Now I didn’t rush her to the hospital cause any time you take a dead body to the hospital they take them away from you and you don’t get to be with them anymore. Right? That’s why we don’t see many dead raisings in the States. Soon as somebody dies they take them away and they start cutting on them and taking pieces out and you’re not with them and you can’t get to them again until the funeral. Whereas in other countries they, a lot of times they, keep the body in the house and different things go on and you can get to the body. That’s why there are so many more dead raisings in other countries. You know, we’ve civilized ourselves out of the power of God most of the time.

In my mind I took Blake’s testimony back to Papineau. I had a few questions to ask the naturalist philosopher.

  • If dead bodies are part of a reality that is exhausted by nature can commanding them to live and not die in the name of Jesus bring them back to life?
  • When dead bodies do in fact come back to life, how does that fit into the deterministic natural laws that supposedly rule a universe closed to the supernatural?

He didn’t answer, but then I only asked him in my mind. In my heart I was beginning to see how our philosophical commitments to what we think of as natural keeps us from seeing what is truly real.

Footnotes

1 Papineau, David, “Naturalism”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2023 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2023/entries/naturalism/>.