Prose – Page 33 – Poetry, Short Prose and Walking

Happy Question Evolution Day!

Today, February 12th, is Darwin’s birthday and also Question Evolution Day.

The kind of evolution being questioned is biological evolution, not the alleged evolution of solar systems or galaxies, although I don’t think that kind of evolution is possible either. The universe is winding down through entropy. It is not evolving into something more complicated than what we see around us.

Biological evolution is also not the differentiation of a specific kind of animal into new breeds or sub-species. That comes about routinely with either artificial or natural selection. However, no new kind of animal can be formed by this selection process alone.

Biological evolution is a way to go from something simple to something complicated without involving the free will of any agent such as God. The whole point of biological evolution is to do away with God as an explanation.

Since God is not involved, evolution will need some mechanism by which change can take place making a transition from slime mold to ourselves plausible. The current mechanism offered is random mutations. Given mutations over long periods of time DNA is supposedly changed so slime mold can turn into a chicken or maybe a dinosaur and the dinosaur can turn into an ape and the ape can become a human being.

However, it has become apparent that mutations aren’t enough to make that happen.

The reason mutations won’t work is because they are generally deleterious. Rarely do they benefit the species undergoing them. That is why our bodies try to correct them, but they do not always succeed. We pass on some of these mistakes to our children who pass them on to their children with additional mutations. A mutational load builds up generation after generation.

This increasing mutational load is what John Sanford calls genetic entropy. Natural selection cannot stop it. The end result of genetic entropy is not some superior creature, but mutational meltdown. That’s when a species is no longer able to reproduce. It goes extinct.

So, unless there is some mechanism for biological evolution to occur besides mutations to supplement natural selection, biological evolution is not possible. Genetic entropy prevents it.

That’s why I celebrate Question Evolution Day.

Admittedly the extinction part is depressing. However, God said that He not only created a very good world with us in it, but in response to the fall of Adam and Eve, He offered us His Son whose sacrifice almost two thousand years ago would allow for a new heaven and a new earth. Given genetic entropy, we are going to need it.

Redemption – Six Sentence Story

Timothy was driving to a closing angry at the “idiot” going only 85 miles per hour in the fast lane. To pass the time he was wasting he went through a list of people he felt needed a piece of his mind giving the windshield a spirited round of abuse he wished those on the list could hear.

In particular he scolded his sister who kept bugging him about “repentance” and “redemption”. When she told him the second coming would be here any day now he reminded her that she told him that very same thing forty years ago and so far nothing, nothing’s happened.

Frustrated with the driver in front of him Timothy jerked his car from the fast lane into the middle lane just as another driver from the opposite side of the expressway accelerated without looking into the middle lane aiming for rapid deliverance in the fast lane. Neither knew what hit them as the traffic unfortunate enough to be following collided or braked to a stop.

Denise offers the word “redemption” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

Sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean from southern Florida

Sunday Walk 79 – Thanksgiving

We pray for God’s intervention in our lives, then congratulate ourselves rather than God for the results.
Jerry Bridges, The Practice of Godliness, (page 101)

We pray to God for something to happen. It happens. However, since it is always possible to concoct some explanation for what happened that does not involve God, we forget about thanking Him. Do we think He wasn’t listening? Do we think He wasn’t involved in that event? If we do, why did we even bother praying?

Bridges adds, “Thanksgiving is a normal result of a vital union with Christ, and a direct measure of the extent to which we are experiencing the reality of that union in our lives.” (page 103)

If we are not thankful after something we explicitly prayed for, and we take Bridges seriously, does that mean we may not have a vital union with Christ?

Jerry Bridges, Godliness

Earlier I had no idea what to write for this post. I prayed. Afterwards much of what’s in this post came to mind as well as suggestions for revisions.

Now, finishing the post, I do not want to be thanking some sentimental imitation, some Greek muse, some forest faerie, some earth mother goddess, some pan-psychic cosmic consciousness for what happened. I hope none of them were involved. To the extent any were, I apologize for the results.

I prayed to God, Adonai, specifically, to Yehovah (the Father) through Yeshua (the Son, Jesus,) in Ruach HaKodesh (the Holy Spirit) (Ephesians 2:18). I thank God over and over again with joy.

Even if nothing had come to mind for this post, and none of it did in the ways I expected it would, I would still thank God, because I prayed, grateful that I can pray, accepting responsibility for any mistakes I made.

That’s my testimony of thanksgiving.

Weekly Parashah Readings
Parashah: Tetzaveh 11 Adar, 5782 – February 12, 2022
Torah: Exodus 27:20 – 30:10
Haftarah: Ezekiel 43:10-27
Brit Chadashah: Hebrews 13:10-17
Resources: Chabad, Hebrew4Christians, Weekly Torah Readings, Calendar

Scribe – Six Sentence Story

Gerald deciphered the script covering the small tablet. The scribe who wrote it did not anticipate that he would have a reader four thousand years in the future. Indeed, given the evils of the conquering lord whose forces had killed almost everyone in his own house, all the scribe hoped for was the world’s imminent end.

At that end, when the real Lord appeared, every tear would be wiped away as praise and thanksgiving joined in an eternal caress. The scribe prayed for mercy, or so Gerald imagined reading now between the lines of the tightly written tablet.

In the meanwhile the currently reigning lord of calamity was busy devouring the land with no time to waste on mercy.

Denise offers the word “scribe” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories. And Eugenia offers the word “caress” for her prompt this week.

Sunday Walk 78 – Autonomy

Trust in the Lord with all your heart
And do not lean on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge Him,
And He will make your paths straight.
Proverbs 3:5-6, New American Standard Bible

The opposite of trusting in the Lord and listening for the Shepherd’s voice is autonomy. Autonomy is trusting in my own understanding and goodness. The delusion that I am doing something good is what drives me down the road to hell powered by those good intentions.

As C.S. Lewis pointed out in The Great Divorce, a tale of deluded shades who preferred hell to heaven, either we say to God, “Thy will be done,” or God says that right back to us.

The following video from Answers in Genesis Canada shows how human autonomy pervades our culture, and perhaps even our own personal worldviews, in rejecting the Lord by following our own understanding justified by a belief in our own goodness.

Weekly Parashah Readings
Parashah: Terumah 4 Adar, 5782 – February 5, 2022
Torah: Exodus 25:1-27:19
Haftarah: I Kings 5:26-6:13
Brit Chadashah: 2 Corinthians 9:1-15; Matthew 5:33-37
Resources: Chabad, Hebrew4Christians, Weekly Torah Readings, Calendar

Sunrise with clouds, boat, water, sun and departing darkness

Wear – Six Sentence Story

George loved to stir-fry Steve’s faults. Every now and then he force-fed Steve a taste. Steve himself had a kettle of righteousness in which he boiled every embarrassing detail he could recall or invent from George’s past.

Although this provided some satisfaction for these two friends, it never satisfied them long enough to stop.

Since so far nothing major happened neither expected anything to wear down as a result of their mischief. When it did both knew the other side needed to apologize though neither knew how they could bring themselves to forgive should that happen.

Denise offers the word “wear” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

Sunday Walk 77 – Owen Barfield and the Evolution of Consciousness

If the eighteenth-century botanist, looking for the first time through the old idols of Linneaus’ fixed and timeless classification into the new perspective of biological evolution, felt a sense of liberation and of light, it can have been but a candle-flame compared with the first glimpse we now get of the familiar world and human history lying together, bathed in the light of the evolution of consciousness.
Owen Barfield, Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry, Harcourt, Brace & World: 1965, page 72

Owen Barfield’s literary estate associates him with C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. When I was trying to understand Saving the Appearances in the 1970s as an undergraduate in a Catholic college I wrongly lumped him with theistic existentialists such as Gabriel Marcel or Martin Buber and social critics such as Jacques Ellul or Ivan Illich. As I saw it they were the good guys offering guidance. I recently read the book again to try to see what went wrong in my own thinking at that time.

Barfield has this to say about Jesus, “If we accept at all the claims made by Christ Jesus concerning his own mission, we must accept that he came to make possible in the course of time the transition of all men from original to final participation; and we shall regard the institution of the Eucharist as a preparation – a preparation (we shall not forget) which has so far only been operant for the sidereally paltry period of nineteen hundred years or so.” (pages 170-171)

As a philosopher with a captive audience he did not have to bother trying to convince his readers with much evidence, whether biblical, logical or empirical, for why we “must accept” his assertions. I wonder today if he had a clue what the mission of Jesus was. By “paltry period” I suspect he thought we still had millions, or even billions, of years of consciousness evolution before us. What I realize today is when one takes the ancient myths of evolution seriously, in spite of the evidence of entropy going against them, one begins dismissing or distorting the Creation, the Fall, the Death, Burial and Resurrection of Jesus and the Last Days.

Why people find the myths of evolution believable, indeed why I used to believe them looking forward to some Age of Aquarius, is not clear to me. If one likes believing such things one might glibly talk about an evolution of this or that as Barfield does of consciousness. If one doesn’t, one could think of such beliefs as a centuries long buildup to the fulfillment of prophecy in 2 Thessalonians 2:3 where Paul predicted a rebellion preceding the day of the Lord.

Admittedly I did not understand Barfield as an undergraduate, but today I wonder just how much there was worth understanding. His stature as an authority made me think that reimagining his own beliefs was more important than reading the Bible. That helped lead me astray. I forgive him for that, knowing that I need forgiveness as well.

Weekly Bible Reading: Romans, 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians
David Pawson, Romans, Part 10, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Part 11
Bible Project, Romans 1-4, Romans 5-16, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians

Weekly Parashah Readings
Parashah: Mishpatim 27 Shevat, 5782 – January 29, 2022
Torah: Exodus 21:1-24:18
Haftarah: Jeremiah 34:8-34:22
Brit Chadashah: Matthew 5:38-42; 17:1-11
Resources: Chabad, Hebrew4Christians, Weekly Torah Readings, Calendar

Shelter – Six Sentence Story

With so many things that could go wrong but wouldn’t, Brian was worried. Survival depended on manna from heaven. Having no control over heaven he wondered, What if the manna stops?

It’s not that Brian didn’t like walking on water once he knew he wouldn’t sink. It was the actual stepping out of the boat that bothered him.

Regardless of these concerns, needless perhaps but afflicting Brian’s mind, there was no other way to the shelter.

Denise offers the word “shelter” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

Sunday Walk 76 – Uniformitarianism

³Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, ⁴And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.
2 Peter 3:3-4 King James Version

Belief in millions or even billions of years of deep time, rather than thousands, rests on assumptions of uniformitarianism. These assumptions include asserting that no global catastrophes occurred in the past such as a high-energy global flood that would have accelerated change, that only low-energy processes built the mountains and carved out the canyons, and that currently measured rates of low-energy change were constant throughout time.

Assuming no global catastrophes and constant rates of change would allow these low-energy processes to be used like clocks extrapolating billions of years of deep time into the past. However, this extrapolation works just as well into the future. The rates of change coming from erosion and entropy give us a maximum age of how long current structures would survive. That means the age of the present structures cannot be older than the amount of time it would take to erode them away.

For example, if the entire fossil record would be eroded away in 10 or even 50 million years, the fossil record could not be older than that. It might be younger, but not older. If someone claimed that a fossil was over 100 million years old, the first question should be how did that fossil survive the effects of day-by-day, low-energy, uniformitarian erosion?

Although low-energy processes can effect a lot of change over millions of years they do not explain how the structures we see today, the mountains and canyons, got there in the first place. To explain them one needs high-energy catastrophes working faster than the low-energy erosion that would wash them all away.

Deep time uniformitarianism attempts to discredit Biblical events that explain why the earth is as it is and where it is going: Creation, Fall, Noah’s Flood, Babel, the Resurrection of Jesus and His Second Coming. When one begins to see that the present state of the earth confirms the view that it is young then a creation and global flood account as described in Genesis becomes plausible. When that becomes plausible the rest of the narrative does as well. When one realizes that all of this is more than plausible one’s whole life renews.

³⁷But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
³⁸For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark,
³⁹And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
Matthew 24:37-39 King James Version

Weekly Bible Reading: Acts and Romans
Commentaries:
David Pawson, Acts, Part 8, Romans, Part 9, Unlocking the Bible
Bible Project, Acts 1-12, Acts 13-28, Romans 1-4, Romans 5-16
Weekly Torah Readings
20 Shevat, 5782, Yitro: Parashat Exodus 18:1-20:23; Haftarat Isaiah 6:1-7:6; 9:5-9:6

Juice – Six Sentence Story

George cut the lemon into halves. He squeezed the juice from each half into his water container. Then he cut the squeezed halves into quarters and ate them.

Distracted by the harmony of clouds and ocean during the morning’s sunrise, he almost forgot. He thanked God for lemons, even the most bitter ones. He thanked God for the one he received today.

Denise offers the word “juice” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories. Eugenia offers the word “harmony” to be used in this week’s Weekly Prompt.