As Brian paced back and forth through the park he was unaware that an old man, sitting on a bench in the shade, was listening to him as he complained about some guy he called a “flake” and then whined about some other guy he said needed to get his “head screwed on straight”.
Ya gotta forgive um, the old man finally shouted as Brian wandered past him once more.
WHAT?
They’re idiots.
Ah . . . good point.
And so are you.
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Denise offers the prompt word “flake” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.
Matthew 18:21-22 KJV – 21 Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? 22 Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.
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.
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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.
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.↩︎
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. ↩︎
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. ↩︎
“Are you done?” Steve asked after listening to a lengthy complaint.
“No, I’m NOT!” Mark said as the cloud further darkened between them.
Not all that Mark said was true, but all of it was plausible, provided you thought the way Mark did. His thoughts must have echoed through his heart for quite some time for it to flow out so fluently.
Eventually Mark took a second breather and Steve once again asked him if he were done. When Mark nodded, accepting defeat that even he couldn’t run his mouth forever, Steve dismissed him without offering any defense eventually forgetting what Mark said, not that Mark had the peace of mind to do the same.
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Denise offers the prompt word “cloud” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.
James 3:10 KJV – Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be.
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.
At the end of the day in Tampa, Greg went to Clearwater Beach (latitude 27.9772, longitude -82.8279) to watch the sun set. Earlier that day he saw the sun rise on Miami Beach.
As the sun began its entry below the waters of the Gulf of America, Greg quickly phoned his brother on a boat in the Indian Ocean near the Cocos Islands (latitude -27.9772, longitude 97.1721) to ask him, “Where do you see the sun in the sky where you are right now?”
“Right now it’s rising in the east,” his brother said.
“How is it possible that I’m seeing the sun half-way below the horizon in the west while you’re watching it rise half-way above the horizon in the east?”
“That’s what you get when you talk to someone on the opposite side of a globe.”
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Denise offers the prompt word “entry” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.
There’s not much to this story except that I have some friends who have been trying to convince me that the earth is flat. This is sort of a rebuttal to their argument.
I was also looking for an opportunity to use the new name, Gulf of America. It took a minute to make the AI tool in the Brave browser admit that the correct name is the Gulf of America considering my current location in Florida although it tried to convince me otherwise.
Two birds watching the sun rise over the Flood Waters of Noah
“When it comes to dragons I’m with Saint George,” Paul said.
“You’d wound or even kill them?”
“With a sword,” Paul affirmed.
“They’ll go extinct!” Paul’s opposition cried.
“Precisely,” Paul said resting on a bunch of obvious assumptions which, since they’re obvious, don’t need to be stated.
At this point I must confess that I don’t know where this story’s going so I’ll just end it by saying, I’m with Paul, or, if you prefer, being more with Paul’s opposition, just pretend I said, Look, squirrel!
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Denise offers the prompt word “wound” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.
Revelation 12:7-9 KJV – 7 And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, 8 And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. 9 And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.
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.
During the regular part of the Sunday service when Brian satirized critics of his ministry, he read, out-loud, a social media post which commanded that the eyes of everyone in his congregation start functioning with “20/20, cataract-less, floater-less, astigmatism-less, whatever-ails-you-less perfect vision”.
“Fat chance that’s going to happen,” Brian mocked just before his six-year old granddaughter sitting in the front row, nearly blind from birth, jumped up and down screaming, “Grandpops, Grandpops, I can SEE!!“
As others in the congregation admitted sudden vision improvement as well, Brian wondered if his own eyes had been healed (hoping not). Looking down at his Bible, a ministry-produced, three-ribboned, leather-bound, authorized version adulterated with his commentaries, he was surprised to clearly make out even the fine print of the footnotes without glasses.
For the next hour Brian read verse after verse. When he finally looked up, all that came out of his mouth was: “So that’s what it says.”
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Denise offers the prompt word “perfect” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.
Poetry, Short Prose and Walking 