Sunday Walk 62 – Baramins and Species

Species are not fixed. The baramin is fixed.

Robert Carter, The Amazing Braided Baramin Concept Is Intrinsic To Creation, (about 4:30 in the video)

In Genesis we read that God created (bara) creatures which came forth after their own kind (min). From here we get the term baramin, a created kind. A baramin may contain a single species, such as mankind being the only species within its own baramin or a baramin may contain many different species, coming and going, but staying within their own kind as they change. That means what is fundamental is the baramin, not the species.

Peer Terborg notes that pluripotent baranomes provide the source for the diversity of life we see today. Life did not start from something simple and evolve into something complex. It started wondrously complicated, designed for change.

That means that Adam was not a primitive human being who evolved into us over time. He was more advanced biologically than we are.

This view of life and change based on DNA does not require deep time to reach the sort of world we experience today. Indeed deep time, even one hundred million years of deep time, would destroy the fossil record through erosion many times over or destroy life itself through genetic entropy. Deep time, along with evolution, are modern myths unworthy of our attention.

I used to have a science fiction view of reality. I thought our species would continue for hundreds of millions, if not billions, of years. We would visit other planets inhabited with intelligent life and settle uninhabited worlds. I did not realize that mutations would stop all of that no matter how many spaceships we sent to other stars.

Today, I don’t think there is life of any sort on those distant planets. The reason is because there is no known mechanism for life to pop into existence outside of God’s deliberate creation.

That realization put a brake on my former fantasies and having given up on the schemes of Man my prayers took root in desperation. We live after the Fall revealed in Genesis and before the Kingdom prophesied in Revelation. It is humbling to realize that there is no way out of this but the coming of the Lord. There never has been. Maranatha!

Derek Prince, The Prayer of Desperation

Weekly Bible Reading:  Jeremiah (Audio), Lamentations (Audio)
3 Cheshvan, 5782, Noach: Parashat Genesis 6:9-11:32; Haftarat Isaiah 54:1-55:5
Commentaries: 
David Pawson, Jeremiah, Part 40, Lamentations, Part 41, Unlocking the Bible
Bible Project, Jeremiah and Lamentations

Going From Green to Yellow
Going From Green to Yellow

Autumn

On autumn walks through falling leaves
we offer gratitude and praise.
This gift of life within cleaned hearts
caresses us through all our days.

Eugenia offers for this week the prompt “Autumn”. I am thinking of Psalm 51:10 when David asks the Lord to create in him a clean heart.

One of my short stories, Gray Butterfly, appeared in Whispers and Echoes. I am grateful to the editor for accepting it.

Eugenia’s Prompt Image

Sweep – Décima

Breathe over me. I want to hear
Your saving Words. With hyssop sweep
my heart so endless joy I’ll keep.
Your Holy Spirit’s ever near.

I humbly bend my listening ear
obeying what You have to say.
I praise You through the end of day
inhaling Spirit with each breath
in gratitude till at my death
the path to You leads where I’ll stay.

Ronovan Hester offers the rhyme word “sweep” to be used in a B rhyme of a décima having rhyme pattern ABBAACCDDC for this week’s challenge. I am thinking of Psalm 51.

Ronovan's Decima Poetry Challenge Image
Ronovan’s Decima Poetry Challenge Image
Rest Area
Rest Area

Fountain – Six Sentence Story

George was told that the fall colors this year were particularly beautiful near the nature center and so he went there and followed a trail leading from the picnic tables by the river.

He hadn’t thought that he had ever been there before, a place where parents would take young children, but then the fountain of his memory opened. He recalled that there should be a loop up ahead of this trail leading back to the center and sure enough there it was with the remembered rustic rail fencing and signs. He also remembered his father and uncle slowly walking behind him while his mother and aunt were waiting for them with sandwiches and pie.

As George returned to the nature center, having forgotten all about the foliage, a rush of regret and remorse led to repentance, something he should have expressed decades ago, for all of his idle words and rebellious deeds directed against his family. Leaving the center he felt a burden lift from his heart opening a future he had not imagined was even there before, but which had been waiting for him all this time.

Denise offers the prompt word “fountain” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories. I was thinking of the last two verses of Psalm 138.

GirlieOnTheEdge Denise Farley's six-sentence-stories icon
GirlieOnTheEdge Denise Farley’s six-sentence-stories icon
Trail

Sunday Walk 61 – Adam and Eve

The genetic evidence strongly suggests that Y Chromosome Adam/Noah and Mitochondrial Eve were not just real people, they were the progenitors of us all.

Carter, R.W., S.S. Lee, and J.C. Sanford. An overview of the independent histories of the human Y-chromosome and the human mitochondrial chromosome. 2018. In Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Creationism, ed. J.H. Whitmore, pp. 133–151. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Creation Science Fellowship.

After the Fall, Adam named his wife Eve. (Genesis 3:20) Today geneticists talk about Y Chromosome Adam and Mitochondrial Eve. The controversy is over estimates of how long ago they lived. If the estimates are over fifty thousand years ago, and you believed it, that would strongly show the Bible is wrong. If the estimates are under ten thousand years, and you believed it, that would confirm the biblical account.

The Bible also mentions a global flood with three couples, Noah’s sons and their wives (Genesis 6-8). This population bottleneck should appear in the genetic record as well and indeed one can find it. Nathaniel T. Jeanson and Ashley D. Holland in 2019 “confirm a 4,500-year history for human paternal ancestry”.

At about 25:00 in the video below John Sanford provided seven lines of genetic evidence supporting the idea of a literal Adam and Eve.

(1) Mitochondrial Eve
(2) Y-Chromosome Adam
(3) Population Bottleneck
(4) Designed Variants in Genome
(5) Babel Dispersion
(6) Ape-to-Man Refuted
(7) Genetic Entropy

John Sanford, Genetic Entropy, Evolution & the Bible

Does that make you look at yourself differently? Do you still think that you are evolved stardust? None of us are.

Additional information on Adam and Eve and other science topics can be found at LogosRA.

I will include the Parashat Torah readings and Haftarah selections from the rest of the Bible in this set of readings since yesterday the reading of the Torah began again in Genesis. I will be using the Chabad.org calendar to find the name of the reading and the Jewish Virtual Library for the verses involved.

Weekly Bible Reading:  Isaiah (Audio), Jeremiah (Audio)
26 Tishrei, 5782, Bereishit: Parashat Genesis 1:1-6:8; Haftarat Isaiah 42:5-43:11
Commentaries: 
David Pawson, Isaiah, Part 38, Jeremiah, Part 39, Unlocking the Bible
Bible Project, Isaiah (40-66) and Jeremiah

Bright – Décima

The storm has passed. The sky is bright.
A rainbow rises from the sea.
It’s stopped by clouds eventually,
but in the sky’s a sail that’s white.
We’re thankful for this gift of light.
Our gratitude pours out as praise
that we were given all these days
to listen, hear with renewed hearts,
forsaking all deceptive arts,
performing service that obeys.

Ronovan Hester offers the rhyme word “bright” to be use in an A rhyme of a décima having rhyme pattern ABBAACCDDC for this week’s challenge.

Ronovan's Decima Poetry Challenge Image
Ronovan’s Decima Poetry Challenge Image
Rainbow
Rainbow

Handle – Six Sectence Story

Robert looked at the nearly empty jar of oil wondering how to handle the rest of his afternoon. He could read, but even though the words made dictionary sense, together they conveyed no ideas to him. Earlier in the day his retreating fever allowed him to reply to some emails sent by those concerned about his heath. He kept messing things up with his typing making mistakes he would not have made before this cold.

He could sleep more and he might try that if those feverish dreams would stop telling him weird tales of spinning spirals absorbing the cosmos and begging him to help.

Robert realized he should take death seriously since this could be it and indeed, if it were it, he knew he wouldn’t be ready, because there was no way in his present state he could get near enough oil for his lamp.

Denise offers the word “handle” for this week’s Six Sentence Stories. If the oil and the lamp seem puzzling rather than terrifying think of Matthew 25:1-12 about the wise and foolish virgins and the oil only some of them carried for their lamps.

GirlieOnTheEdge Denise Farley's six-sentence-stories icon
GirlieOnTheEdge Denise Farley’s six-sentence-stories icon

Sunday Walk 60 – Doing What Is Right In One’s Own Eyes

In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.

Judges 21:25, King James Bible 1769

The bottom line up front would be if I’m not listening to and obeying God’s word in my heart, validated through the Bible, but instead come up with my own ideas of what is good, I will need to repent of many if not all of those supposedly good deeds.

The road to hell is paved with the good intentions I follow where good is defined as what I find right in my own eyes. Eve, deceived by the serpent and with no objection from Adam, saw the forbidden fruit as “good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise” (Genesis 3). When they ate the fruit, they were doing what was right in their own eyes.

The 20th century Catholic philosopher, G.E.M. Anscombe seems to have been saying something like that in her classic paper, Modern Moral Philosophy, where she criticized moral philosophy from Kant onward. Her message, as I understand it, is there’s no moral law that a philosopher can come up with outside of that coming from a divine lawgiver.

When a philosopher tries to ground moral obligation on something other than God’s command the philosopher’s own good intentions become what is right in his eyes. Since he is the author of his particular moral system this makes him one of many self-righteous lawgivers. Walk down the path of that self-righteous moral philosophy and one walks down the road to hell either on this earth or hereafter. Injustice, addiction, and conflict are some of the results one can expect.

Over the past few centuries that Anscombe was critical of people had powerful means to implement what was right in their own eyes leading to autonomy from God. Such humanistic autonomy is best seen as rebelliousness. We live in a dark age regarding morality because we rationalize what we should do based on criteria like maximizing happiness or effective altruism rather than hearing God’s voice confirmed through the Bible. We don’t listen to God’s voice because we don’t believe there is a God to listen to, or if we do like Adam and Eve surely did, we think we know better.

So, how do we hear God’s soft voice and how do we distinguish it from the deceiver’s misdirection? That is the topic of the video series below.

Derek Prince, Four Requirements

Weekly Bible Reading:  Song of Solomon (Audio), Isaiah (Audio)
Commentaries: 
David Pawson, Song of Songs, Part 36, Isaiah, Part 37, Unlocking the Bible
Bible Project, Song of Solomon and Isaiah (1-39)

Foggy Reflection
Foggy Reflection