Perceptions of God, Creationism and Evolution

[vojnik]

The only reason I became confrontational was because I tried to provide a statement that was so absurd to show how absurd the evolutionists theory is and I get called a kook. You didn't see me come on here and calling people kooks and fucken idiots or if they are fucken kidding when they stated their stance on evolution and athiesm I instead asked for credit for there beliefs evidence of these things but instead peoplee chose to attack me as being a new member then when I chose to attack back I get the blame

[Risto the Great]

vojnik, all part of internet forum excitement. Your continued discussions will ensure your true feelings and level of intellect will be conveyed.

[Soldier of Macedon]

SoM the only reason I have been so confrontational with some members of this forum is the failure to read posts properly.......

Being confrontational doesn't solve that problem. You will find that being sensible usually appeals to more people. You openly attacked and dismissed evolution, what sort of reaction did you think you would get? In my opinion, you have got as much as you gave. You have the choice to move on from that point and continue with the rest of the discussion.

I don't know how many times I stated that the Dinosaur question I imposed was to prove a point that evolution like the dinosaur statement from above are absurd and have no evidence what so ever.

The suggestion that God placed dinosaur bones in the ground is absurd, whereas the general concept of evolution is not absurd. If your intention was to propose a comparison, it was not a good example.

I don't see what was wrong with asking TM to change his Avatar........

You weren't just asking him to change it, you were telling him to change it. Greece has been telling Macedonia to change its name. In both cases it is wrong.

I was not suggesting you need to have the same interpretation. Otherwise there would be no jobs for priests and internet forums!

I know mate, I just don't think people must believe it 'all' to consider themselves as Christians.

[Soldier of Macedon]

SoM, you are pretty much stating that the Biblical version of events will always be regarded as false unless proven true.

Not exactly. I would use the term 'false' in some instances, the term 'unproven' in others, and the term 'probable' in others still. Of course, much of the Bible is factual and I have never denied that.

When someone makes a comment about evolution (which does not even claim to be true, rather it only claims to be one possible theory), noone asks them to provide evidence that it is true, rather, its automatically expected that anyone denying the theory of evolution prove that the theory is false.

If we are going to generalise, then the same is also true for religion. To be honest Tom, I am not a 'hardcore' evolutionist, but neither am I a Christian fundamentalist. I am open to logical suggestions and assertions, and I think this gives me a good platform to make an informed yet objective and balanced assessment.

I think its perfectly legitimate for Vojnik to question the underlying assumptions that various scientific theories make and whether those assumptions can be conclusively proven.

So do I, but I also think he could use better examples than dinosaur bones placed in the earth by God, even if it was for comparison only. Your examples were much more thought-provoking, particularly the below, which I will need to re-visit shortly when I have more time:

Evidence for a Young World

by D. Russell Humphreys, Ph.D.


Here are fourteen natural phenomena which conflict with the evolutionary idea that the universe is billions of years old. The numbers listed below in bold print (usually in the millions of years) are often maximum possible ages set by each process, not the actual ages. The numbers in italics are the ages required by evolutionary theory for each item. The point is that the maximum possible ages are always much less than the required evolutionary ages, while the biblical age (6,000 years) always fits comfortably within the maximum possible ages. Thus, the following items are evidence against the evolutionary time scale and for the biblical time scale. Much more young-world evidence exists, but I have chosen these items for brevity and simplicity. Some of the items on this list can be reconciled with the old-age view only by making a series of improbable and unproven assumptions; others can fit in only with a recent creation.

1. Galaxies wind themselves up too fast.
The stars of our own galaxy, the Milky Way, rotate about the galactic center with different speeds, the inner ones rotating faster than the outer ones. The observed rotation speeds are so fast that if our galaxy were more than a few hundred million years old, it would be a featureless disc of stars instead of its present spiral shape.1 Yet our galaxy is supposed to be at least 10 billion years old. Evolutionists call this "the winding-up dilemma," which they have known about for fifty years. They have devised many theories to try to explain it, each one failing after a brief period of popularity. The same "winding-up" dilemma also applies to other galaxies. For the last few decades the favored attempt to resolve the puzzle has been a complex theory called "density waves."1 The theory has conceptual problems, has to be arbitrarily and very finely tuned, and has been called into serious question by the Hubble Space Telescope's discovery of very detailed spiral structure in the central hub of the "Whirlpool" galaxy, M51.2

2. Too few supernova remnants.
According to astronomical observations, galaxies like our own experience about one supernova (a violently-exploding star) every 25 years. The gas and dust remnants from such explosions (like the Crab Nebula) expand outward rapidly and should remain visible for over a million years. Yet the nearby parts of our galaxy in which we could observe such gas and dust shells contain only about 200 supernova remnants. That number is consistent with only about 7,000 years worth of supernovas.3

3. Comets disintegrate too quickly.
According to evolutionary theory, comets are supposed to be the same age as the solar system, about five billion years. Yet each time a comet orbits close to the sun, it loses so much of its material that it could not survive much longer than about 100,000 years. Many comets have typical ages of less than 10,000 years.4 Evolutionists explain this discrepancy by assuming that (a) comets come from an unobserved spherical "Oort cloud" well beyond the orbit of Pluto, (b) improbable gravitational interactions with infrequently passing stars often knock comets into the solar system, and (c) other improbable interactions with planets slow down the incoming comets often enough to account for the hundreds of comets observed.5 So far, none of these assumptions has been substantiated either by observations or realistic calculations. Lately, there has been much talk of the "Kuiper Belt," a disc of supposed comet sources lying in the plane of the solar system just outside the orbit of Pluto. Some asteroid-sized bodies of ice exist in that location, but they do not solve the evolutionists' problem, since according to evolutionary theory, the Kuiper Belt would quickly become exhausted if there were no Oort cloud to supply it.

4. Not enough mud on the sea floor.
Each year, water and winds erode about 20 billion tons of dirt and rock from the continents and deposit it in the ocean.6 This material accumulates as loose sediment on the hard basaltic (lava-formed) rock of the ocean floor. The average depth of all the sediment in the whole ocean is less than 400 meters.7 The main way known to remove the sediment from the ocean floor is by plate tectonic subduction. That is, sea floor slides slowly (a few cm/year) beneath the continents, taking some sediment with it. According to secular scientific literature, that process presently removes only 1 billion tons per year.7 As far as anyone knows, the other 19 billion tons per year simply accumulate. At that rate, erosion would deposit the present mass of sediment in less than 12 million years. Yet according to evolutionary theory, erosion and plate subduction have been going on as long as the oceans have existed, an alleged three billion years. If that were so, the rates above imply that the oceans would be massively choked with sediment dozens of kilometers deep. An alternative (creationist) explanation is that erosion from the waters of the Genesis flood running off the continents deposited the present amount of sediment within a short time about 5,000 years ago.

5. Not enough sodium in the sea.
Every year, rivers8 and other sources9 dump over 450 million tons of sodium into the ocean. Only 27% of this sodium manages to get back out of the sea each year.9,10 As far as anyone knows, the remainder simply accumulates in the ocean. If the sea had no sodium to start with, it would have accumulated its present amount in less than 42 million years at today's input and output rates.10 This is much less than the evolutionary age of the ocean, three billion years. The usual reply to this discrepancy is that past sodium inputs must have been less and outputs greater. However, calculations that are as generous as possible to evolutionary scenarios still give a maximum age of only 62 million years.10 Calculations11 for many other seawater elements give much younger ages for the ocean.

6. The earth's magnetic field is decaying too fast. Electrical The total energy stored in the earth's magnetic field ("dipole" and "non-dipole") is decreasing with a half-life of 1,465 (± 165) years.12 Evolutionary theories explaining this rapid decrease, as well as how the earth could have maintained its magnetic field for billions of years are very complex and inadequate. A much better creationist theory exists. It is straightforward, based on sound physics, and explains many features of the field: its creation, rapid reversals during the Genesis flood, surface intensity decreases and increases until the time of Christ, and a steady decay since then.13 This theory matches paleomagnetic, historic, and present data, most startlingly with evidence for rapid changes.14 The main result is that the field's total energy (not surface intensity) has always decayed at least as fast as now. At that rate the field could not be more than 20,000 years old.15

7. Many strata are too tightly bent.
In many mountainous areas, strata thousands of feet thick are bent and folded into hairpin shapes. The conventional geologic time scale says these formations were deeply buried and solidified for hundreds of millions of years before they were bent. Yet the folding occurred without cracking, with radii so small that the entire formation had to be still wet and unsolidified when the bending occurred. This implies that the folding occurred less than thousands of years after deposition.16

8. Biological material decays too fast.

Natural radioactivity, mutations, and decay degrade DNA and other biological material rapidly. Measurements of the mutation rate of mitochondrial DNA recently forced researchers to revise the age of "mitochondrial Eve" from a theorized 200,000 years down to possibly as low as 6,000 years.17 DNA experts insist that DNA cannot exist in natural environments longer than 10,000 years, yet intact strands of DNA appear to have been recovered from fossils allegedly much older: Neandertal bones, insects in amber, and even from dinosaur fossils.18 Bacteria allegedly 250 million years old apparently have been revived with no DNA damage.19 Soft tissue and blood cells from a dinosaur have astonished experts.20

9. Fossil radioactivity shortens geologic "ages" to a few years. Radiohalos are rings of color formed around microscopic bits of radioactive minerals in rock crystals. They are fossil evidence of radioactive decay.21 "Squashed" Polonium-210 radiohalos indicate that Jurassic, Triassic, and Eocene formations in the Colorado plateau were deposited within months of one another, not hundreds of millions of years apart as required by the conventional time scale.22 "Orphan" Polonium-218 radiohalos, having no evidence of their mother elements, imply accelerated nuclear decay and very rapid formation of associated minerals.23,24

10. Too much helium in minerals.
Uranium and thorium generate helium atoms as they decay to lead. A study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research showed that such helium produced in zircon crystals in deep, hot Precambrian granitic rock has not had time to escape.25 Though the rocks contain 1.5 billion years worth of nuclear decay products, newly-measured rates of helium loss from zircon show that the helium has been leaking for only 6,000 (± 2000) years.26 This is not only evidence for the youth of the earth, but also for episodes of greatly accelerated decay rates of long half-life nuclei within thousands of years ago, compressing radioisotope timescales enormously.

11. Too much carbon 14 in deep geologic strata.

With their short 5,700-year half-life, no carbon 14 atoms should exist in any carbon older than 250,000 years. Yet it has proven impossible to find any natural source of carbon below Pleistocene (Ice Age) strata that does not contain significant amounts of carbon 14, even though such strata are supposed to be millions or billions of years old. Conventional carbon 14 laboratories have been aware of this anomaly since the early 1980s, have striven to eliminate it, and are unable to account for it. Lately the world's best such laboratory which has learned during two decades of low-C14 measurements how not to contaminate specimens externally, under contract to creationists, confirmed such observations for coal samples and even for a dozen diamonds, which cannot be contaminated in situ with recent carbon.27 These constitute very strong evidence that the earth is only thousands, not billions, of years old.

12. Not enough Stone Age skeletons.
Evolutionary anthropologists now say that Homo sapiens existed for at least 185,000 years before agriculture began,28 during which time the world population of humans was roughly constant, between one and ten million. All that time they were burying their dead, often with artifacts. By that scenario, they would have buried at least eight billion bodies.29 If the evolutionary time scale is correct, buried bones should be able to last for much longer than 200,000 years, so many of the supposed eight billion stone age skeletons should still be around (and certainly the buried artifacts). Yet only a few thousand have been found. This implies that the Stone Age was much shorter than evolutionists think, perhaps only a few hundred years in many areas.

13. Agriculture is too recent.
The usual evolutionary picture has men existing as hunters and gatherers for 185,000 years during the Stone Age before discovering agriculture less than 10,000 years ago.29 Yet the archaeological evidence shows that Stone Age men were as intelligent as we are. It is very improbable that none of the eight billion people mentioned in item 12 should discover that plants grow from seeds. It is more likely that men were without agriculture for a very short time after the Flood, if at all.31

14. History is too short.
According to evolutionists, Stone Age Homo sapiens existed for 190,000 years before beginning to make written records about 4,000 to 5,000 years ago. Prehistoric man built megalithic monuments, made beautiful cave paintings, and kept records of lunar phases.30 Why would he wait two thousand centuries before using the same skills to record history? The biblical time scale is much more likely.31

And this:

A popular and supposedly foolproof method was used on two lava flows in the Grand Canyon that should be ideal for radioactive age estimation. The results were similarly bad. Young basalt rock at the Canyon's top produced an age estimate 270 million years older than ancient basalt rock at the Canyon's bottom. The problem seems to arise from basic wrong assumptions in the method (rubidium-strontium isochron). If such a sophisticated method is so flawed, geologist Dr. Steven Austin rightly wonders, "Has anyone successfully dated a Grand Canyon rock?"5

It is also interesting that suggested times of when the Great Flood may have occured also roughly coincide with the suggested end of the last glacial maximum of the most recent Ice Age, which came as a result of warming temperature on earth, and may indeed have caused events which would be considered as a 'great' flood.

I was discussing this whole issue with a few colleagues of mine not long ago. The usual was stated (man evolved) and asked (but what they evolve from, and them before, and before, etc). The argument was inevitable - God must have created it all. Then one of the participants in the discussion asked - who created God?

[Vangelovski]

I have changed the title of this thread to read Perceptions of God, Creationism and Evolution. .

You confused the crap out of me J

Are you suggesting the date could be earlier, or that "let there be light" and the creation of life are all part of the same event in the same period of time? .

According to the Bible, God created everything in six literal days. By everything I mean everything.

We can prove our existence because we are living beings, we just cannot prove the true origin of our existence, which results in some finding answers through devout faith, and others, more recently, through logical interpretation of history, archaeology, etc - so far as logic allows given that it's basis is generally factual evidence. However, one thing that needs to be accepted is that our ability as humans to investigate, discover and analyse such matters is markedly better than it was 2,000 years ago. .

We can’t really prove anything. Can you prove to me that we actually exist, as opposed to being in the matrix or a figment of someone’s imagination?

That is not the same thing. When I interact with an Italian or a Turk, I know they belong to their respective nations and not to mine. Now, we can argue about how nations are defined according to both general and fringe interpretations, but the fact of their existence cannot be disputed. The assertion that earth did not exist prior to 5500BC can convincingly be argued against. But if one is not open to other suggestions, then it becomes rather a moot point. .

The existence of nations is not an indisputable fact. Nations are not tangible, they are an idea. Marxists have always denied the existence of nations. Rather, they believe people either belong to the proletariat or the bourgeoisie and that nations are the figment of bourgeoisie imagination in order to suppress the masses.


If you can argue convincingly against a young earth (i.e, 5500BC), then I'm all ears. I used to believe in an old earth (as many Christians do), but I have been thoroughly convinced against such a notion over the past few years.

Can you explain what exactly are these specific set of beliefs, and how they are put into practice in everyday life? What makes you more of a Christian than me? .

Come on SoM, this is something I’ve posted over and over again. A Christian is someone who believes in God the father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit – Three persons, one indivisible God. A Christian believes that Jesus (God) came to earth, died on the Cross to pay for our sins and then rose to life three days later. A Christian believes that if you put your faith in Jesus, then because of his death on the cross to pay for our sins, will take us to live with him for eternity.

Someone who believes this is a Christian and if you believe this, then its only logical to believe that this all powerful God gave us the Bible and whats in the Bible is true, not just a bunch of stories.

Its not about what you do or don’t do, its about faith in Jesus. Faith in Jesus is what makes one a Christian.

That is almost like saying certainty is borne of uncertainty, it really isn't that compelling of an argument in favour of creationism - but as an argument, it is more effective when used against the evolution theory.

I’m not sure what you mean by this. But how can something come out of nothing? Nothing is literally that – nothing – the absence of everything. How can even the tiniest particle just spontaneously appear out of nothing?

[indigen]

The only reason I became confrontational was because I tried to provide a statement that was so absurd to show how absurd the evolutionists theory is and I get called a kook

Firstly, I BELIEVE in EVOLUTION! Evolution is part of MAINSTREAM education curriculum in nearly all (if not all) countries of the world today and probably has been that way for most of last century and a creationist calling it "absurd" is, IMHO, an unsustainable ideological position (i.e. it is a fringe position in the advanced/developed and developing world countries today).

There are scientist who believe God created the Universe but they support evolution! This, IMHO, is a far more reasoned and logical position to take on the question of the existence of God than to argue for a newly created earth in accordance of the creation theory found in the Bible.


Lavce, mate, an atheist can NOT believe in the existence of God!

[Vangelovski]

It is also interesting that suggested times of when the Great Flood may have occured also roughly coincide with the suggested end of the last glacial maximum of the most recent Ice Age, which came as a result of warming temperature on earth, and may indeed have caused events which would be considered as a 'great' flood.

I might post some more on this at a later time - its a fairly big topic.

[makedonin]

Since we moved the thread further in general here is a piece that does makes it intriguing to think over what the Bible is:

The Neglect of the Firstborn in New Testament Studies

Bart D. Ehrman

Presidential Lecture, Society of Biblical Literature, SE Region

March 1997

Bart Ehrman delivered this presidential address to the audience gathered at the Southeastern Commission for the Study of Religion in Macon, Georgia, on March 14, 1997. A fuller discussion of the textual variants mentioned below (Luke 22:19-20) can be found in Ehrman's book The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, pp. 197-209

Interpreters of the NT are faced with a discomforting reality that many of them would like to ignore. In many instances, we don't know what the authors of the NT actually wrote. It often proves difficult enough to establish what the words of the NT mean; the fact that in some instances we don't know what the words actually were does more than a little to exacerbate the problem.

I say that many interpreters would like to ignore this reality; but perhaps that isn't strong enough. In point of fact, many interpreters, possibly most, do ignore it, pretending that the textual basis of the Christian Scriptures is secure, when unhappily, it is not.

When the individual authors of the NT released their works to the public, each book found a niche in one or another of the burgeoning Christian communities that were scattered, principally in large Greek-speaking urban areas, around the Mediterranean. Anyone within these communities who wanted a copy of these books, whether for private use, as community property, or for general distribution, was compelled to produce a copy by hand, or to acquire the services of someone else to do so.

During the course of their transmission, the original copies of these books came to be lost, worn out, or destroyed; the early Christians evidently saw no need to preserve their original texts for antiquarian or other reasons. Had they been more fully cognizant of what happens to documents that are copied by hand, however, especially by hands that are not professionally trained for the job, they may have exercised greater caution in preserving the originals. As it is, for whatever historical reasons, the originals no longer survive. What do survive are copies of the originals, or, to be more precise, copies made from the copies of the copies of the originals, thousands of these subsequent copies, dating from the 2nd to the 16th centuries, some of them tiny fragments the size of a credit card, uncovered in garbage heaps buried in the sands of Egypt, others of them enormous and elegant tomes preserved in the great libraries and monasteries of Europe. It is difficult to know what the authors of the Greek New Testament wrote, in many instances, because all of these surviving copies differ from one another, sometimes significantly.

The severity of the problem was not recognized throughout the Middle Ages or even, for the most part, during the Renaissance. Indeed, biblical scholars were not forcefully confronted with the uncertainty of their texts until the early eighteenth century. The floodgates opened in 1707, when an Oxford scholar named John Mill published an edition of the Greek New Testament that contained a critical apparatus systematically and graphically detailing the differences among the surviving witnesses of the NT. Mill had devoted some thirty years of his life to examining a hundred or so Greek MSS, the early versions of the NT, and the citations of the NT in the writings of the church fathers. His apparatus did not include all of the differences that he had uncovered in his investigation, but only the ones that he considered significant for the purposes of exegesis or textual reconstruction. These, however, were enough. To the shock and dismay of many of his contemporaries, Mill's apparatus indicated some 30,000 places of variation, 30,000 places where the available witnesses to the NT text differed from one another.

Numerous representatives of traditional piety were immediately outraged, and promptly denounced Mill's publication as a demonic attempt to render the text of the NT uncertain. Mill's supporters, on the other hand, pointed out that he had not invented these 30,000 places of variation, but had simply noticed them. One positive outcome of the dispute was that a number of competent, classically-trained scholars entered into the fray, such disparate personalities as Richard Bentley and Johann Albrecht Bengel, and eventually such greats as Karl Lachmann and J. J. Griesbach. For the most part these scholars were less interested in discovering differences in our manuscripts than in figuring out what to do with the differences, with the ultimate objective of establishing the so-called original text, that is, the text as actually written by the New Testament authors themselves. They developed a number of criteria by which manuscripts, and the readings they contained, could be evaluated; building on one another's work, they labored to establish which of the surviving readings were original and which were later modifications, either accidental slips made by careless or incompetent scribes or intentional alterations made by scribes who thought the text ought to say what they already knew it to mean.

These pioneering efforts at establishing the text represent the first attempts to study the New Testament on critical, rather than confessional, grounds. Long before other kinds of critical approaches to the text--source, form, redaction, rhetorical, structuralist, and post-structuralist forms of criticism--there was textual criticism. It was the firstborn of NT studies.

With the passing of time, and the emergence of new questions and interests, every critical approach to the New Testament becomes antiquated; in some instances this is understandable. The very assumptions underlying form critical and structuralist analyses, for example, are today roundly rejected, probably in most quarters. And the very real contributions to be made through traditional forms of source and redaction criticism have already been made; frankly, there doesn't appear to be much water left in these wells, even though what has already been retrieved can on occasion be fruitfully recycled. With textual criticism, we are, somewhat ironically, in a different situation altogether. It's true that some of the fundamental assumptions of the field are undergoing important critique, as a growing number of textual scholars are beginning to question seriously and fruitfully what it might mean to speak about an "original" text, for example, of the Gospel of Mark or John. Even so, at the end of the day, the importance of the basic task is widely acknowledged: you can't very well interpret what a text means if you don't know what it says. And the basic methods for establishing the earliest form of the text are widely seen as theoretically defensible and practically indispensable. Yet more importantly, this is one critical well that is not at all dry. It is this latter point that I want to stress in my talk. We have nearly 50 times the number of MSS that John Mill had at his disposal in 1707, and we know of possibly 100 times as many textual variants--far more variants among our manuscripts than there are words in the New Testament. Most of these variant readings are completely insignificant for larger questions, involving such things as misspelled words and fatigue-inspired slips of pens. But a lot of them do have broader implications for other areas of research, such as biblical exegesis, Christian theology, and early Christian social history. Most of these have not been considered adequately in light of these broader concerns. There is in fact a lot that remains to be done in this field that is both interesting and significant.

This is not widely recognized, however, and the firstborn of NT studies has, as a result, suffered from some serious neglect. The neglect is evident on almost all levels. A surprising number of PhD's in NT--we may as well admit it--are barely competent in Greek. Even more are unable to make sense of the critical apparatus that stands at the foot of every page of the Nestle- Aland Greek New Testament that everyone uses. And even those who can construe the apparatus are rarely equipped to understand why one reading, the one found in the text, has been printed, while others are found only in the apparatus--let alone to come to independent judgments about the adequacy of the decision of the United Bible Society's committee, comprised of Kurt and Barbara Aland, Bruce Metzger, and others. Commentators typically ignore textual problems, not simply because they have other things to do but also because in many instances they don't have the wherewithal to deal with the problems.

Many students of the New Testament in divinity schools and seminaries, not to speak of Greek students in colleges and universities, are never taught what the apparatus is all about; many of them don't know that there is a difference between the various kinds of apparatus that are available; most of them don't realize that the apparatuses are not exhaustive but barely scratch the surface of the textual variation of which we now have knowledge. And this is not to say a word about the general population, laypeople who don't know that the New Testament was written in Greek and that we don't actually have the NT books themselves but only copies produced many centuries later that differ widely among one another.

This is raw ignorance in one of its most crass forms, an ignorance that can be and has been fed upon by well-meaning incompetents and glory-seeking cranks. Very few people in our society have any grounds whatsoever to evaluate the claims that the words of the King James Translation are themselves inspired by God; very few highly trained New Testament scholars are able actually to dispute the claims of Carston Thiede found in a major article of Time Magazine that one of our papyrus MSS, P64, in fact dates to the middle of the first century and may represent an eyewitness account of the life of Jesus by one of his followers. There are lots of knees jerking over these issues, but very few minds working. At the very least scholars of the NT should be equipped to deal with these matters. And, in fact, the training that can prepare them to do so can prove salutary for other reasons, since considerations of the problems of the text naturally involve so many areas of research interest to scholars of the Bible and early Christianity.

This is the point I'd like to emphasize in the bulk of the time I have remaining. In order to illustrate the wide range of relatively interesting issues that can be involved with the textual variation of the NT, I've decided to discuss in some detail just one variant reading, out of a cast of hundreds that could readily be chosen for the purpose, a solitary textual problem whose resolution has broad ranging implications for such fields as exegesis, the history of doctrine, the development of Christian liturgy, and, of all things, post-modernist understandings of ancient texts.

I've chosen for my illustration one of the most intriguing textual problems of the Gospel of Luke, namely the variant accounts of the Last Supper preserved in MSS of Luke 22:19-20. The NT MSS present the passage in two major forms; one is conveniently labeled the "shorter text," because it lacks vv. 19b- 20, so that the passage reads as follows (17-19a, 21):

Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he said, "Take this and divide it among yourselves. 18 For I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes." 19 Then he took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them saying, "This is my body. 21 But see, the one who betrays me is with me, and his hand is on the table."
The longer text includes the familiar material (italicized) between the final two sentences (vv. 19b-20):

Then he took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them saying, "This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me." 20 And he did the same with the cup after supper, saying, "This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. 21 But see, the one who betrays me is with me, and his hand is on the table."
This longer form of the text is the one familiar to most readers of the Bible, since it is the one found in virtually all modern English translations and is very similar to the words of institution recorded by the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 11. It is also the one found in most of our Greek manuscripts of Luke. There are nonetheless solid reasons for thinking that the shorter text was the one originally written by the author, and that the passage italicized above was added by a scribe of the second century, some sixty or seventy years after the Gospel was first placed in circulation.

To analyze the competing merits of the two readings, the first step is obviously to consider the manuscripts supporting each one.

Whereas hundreds of mss attest the longer reading of the text, the shorter form is supported only by one early Greek and a handful of Old Latin manuscripts. That in itself is not a compelling reason for rejecting it, however, precisely because of the nature of the particular manuscripts in question. For technical reasons, whenever these particular manuscripts agree on a reading, scholars generally concede that it goes back at the least to the second century; but the odd thing is that when they do agree, it is almost always in expanded forms of the text, rather than contracted forms. In this instance, the mss that generally preserve longer texts attest the shorter one. This has given scholars pause; in this passage these manuscripts attest a reading that cuts against their known proclivities.

There are strong internal grounds for thinking they do so here because the shorter text is, in fact, the oldest surviving reading. It's worth noting, for example, that the longer passage preserves an inordinately high number of literary features completely uncharacteristic of Luke-Acts, and that precisely these non-Lukan features are the key elements of the text: the phrase "for you" occurs twice in this passage, but nowhere else in all of Luke-Acts, the word for "remembrance," occurs only here in Luke- Acts, and never elsewhere does Luke speak of the "new covenant," let alone the new covenant "in my blood."

But far more important than the absence of this vocabulary from the rest of Luke-Acts is the matter of its ideational content. For it is surely significant that the understanding of Jesus' death expressed by these words and phrases is otherwise absent from Luke's entire two-volume work. When Jesus says in Luke 22:19b-20 that his body is given "for you" and that his blood is shed "for you," he is stating what Luke says nowhere else: in neither his Gospel nor Acts does he portray Jesus' death as an atonement for sins.

Although most readers probably haven't noticed, never in his two volumes does Luke say that Jesus died "for your sins" or "for you." Significantly when he summarizes the features of the "Christ event" in the speeches of Acts, with remarkable consistency he portrays the death of Jesus not as an atoning sacrifice, but as a miscarriage of justice that God reversed by vindicating Jesus at the resurrection (e.g., Acts 2, 3, and 4). In none of these speeches is Jesus said to die "for" anyone. Instead, the scandal of his death as God's righteous one drives people to their knees in repentance, and it's this repentance that brings forgiveness of sins. In one passage in particular one might expect some reference, however distant, to Jesus' atoning death. In Acts 8 the apostle Philip encounters an Ethiopian eunuch reading the text of Scripture used most widely by early Christians to explain Jesus' death as a vicarious atonement: Isaiah 53. But somewhat remarkably, when Luke cites the passage as read by the Ethiopian, he includes not a word about the Servant of the Lord being "wounded for our transgressions" (Isa. 53:5), being "bruised for our iniquities" (53:5), or making himself "an offering for sin" (53:10). Luke has instead crafted his quotation to affirm his own view of Jesus' passion: he died as an innocent victim who was then vindicated (Acts 8:32-33).

It is particularly important to stress that Luke has not simply overlooked or avoided making references to Jesus' death as an atonement; he has in fact gone out of his way to eliminate notions of atonement from the one source we are virtually certain he had before him, the Gospel of Mark. Mark makes two poignant references to the salvific significance of Jesus' death and Luke changed them both. The first and most obvious comes in the famous words of Jesus in Mark 10 "For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many." If Luke found this theology acceptable, it is hard to explain what he did with the verse. He omitted it altogether.

The other reference is more subtle, but nonetheless forms a kind of linchpin for Mark's theology of the cross. In Mark's account, Jesus' death is immediately followed by two signs that suggest its meaning: the temple curtain is ripped in half and the Roman centurion confesses him to be "the Son of God" (15:38-39). Mark evidently uses the ripping of the curtain of the Holy of Holies to indicate that in the death of Jesus God has made himself available to human beings, destroying the barrier of access to him. And the confession of the centurion represents the first (and only) instance of a person in Mark's Gospel who fully recognizes who Jesus is: he is the Son of God who had to die, whose death was not inimical to his divine sonship but was instead constitutive of it. In short, the ripping of the curtain and the confession of the centurion reveal Mark's understanding of Jesus' death as an atoning sacrifice that effects salvation.

Luke's account of Jesus' death, which is dependent on Mark's, also records a tearing of the temple curtain and a confession of the centurion. But the events are modified so that their significance is transformed. The tearing of the curtain in the Temple no longer results from Jesus' death, because in Luke it occurs before Jesus dies (23:45). What the event might mean to Luke has been debated, but since it is now combined with the eerie darkness that has come over the land, it appears to represent a cosmic sign that accompanies the hour of darkness, symbolizing God's judgment upon his own people who have rejected his gift of "light to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death" (1:79), a judgment that falls in particular on the religious institution which his people have perverted to their own ends (Luke 19:45-46).

So too Luke has changed the confession of the centurion. No longer does it indicate a profession of faith in the Son of God who has died ("Truly this man was the Son of God," Mark 15:39); now it coincides with Luke's own understanding of Jesus' death, for here the centurion proclaims, "Truly this man was innocent" (Luke 23:47). The death of Jesus in Luke-Acts is not a death that effects an atoning sacrifice. It is the death of a righteous martyr who has suffered from miscarried justice, whose death is vindicated by God at the resurrection. Let me emphasize: Luke was able to shift the focus away from the atoning significance of Jesus' death only by modifying the one account of that death which we are certain he had received. What though has this to do with our textual problem?

In fact only one of the two readings conforms with the theology of Luke otherwise, and specifically with his demonstrable handling of his Marcan source. The verses of the longer text of the institution of the Lord's Supper stress the atoning significance of Jesus' death for his disciples. That is, they emphasize precisely what Luke has gone out of his way to eliminate from his entire two-volume narrative. It's hard to see these verses as coming from Luke's own pen.

I would like to deal with one final aspect of the passage before drawing out some of the broader implications. One of the reasons most people prefer the longer form of the text is that without the addition of vv. 19b-20 the text appears to end abruptly, so abruptly that it is difficult to imagine a Christian author not supplementing the account with additional material. Look for yourself at the passage. Doesn't the abruptness of the shorter text suggest that the longer text must have been original?

In fact, as has sometimes been recognized, it probably indicates just the reverse. Readers who are thoroughly conversant with the eucharistic liturgy feel that something is "missing" when Jesus' words over the bread are not followed by his passing of the cup. But of course this is the case not only for modern critics who assume that Luke could not have ended the passage so shortly, but also for ancient scribes who were equally accustomed to the traditions of Jesus' Last Supper. What would be more natural for scribes conversant with what "really happened" at Jesus' last meal than to supplement Luke's version with the words drawn from a tradition with which they were otherwise familiar?

Interestingly, this "other tradition" (i.e. vv. 19b-20 in the longer text) is not only anomalous within Luke's Gospel itself, it also has very few connections with Luke's source, the Gospel of Mark. Instead, the additional words practically mirror the familiar form of the institution preserved in Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. Is it possible that a scribe has inserted a Pauline form of the institution into Luke's seemingly too brief account?

This appears to be the best explanation for the longer passage. For in point of fact, no one has been able to provide a convincing explanation for how the shorter text would have come into existence if the longer were original. One of the standard explanations is that a scribe who either could not understand or did not appreciate the appearance of two cups in Luke's narrative eliminated one of them to make the account coincide better with all the others. The problem is that it's hard to explain a scribe harmonizing the account to its parallels by eliminating the second cup instead of the first. It is the first that is problematic, since it is distributed before the giving of the bread; and it is the second that is familiar, because the words of institution parallel so closely those of Paul in 1 Corinthians. Anyone wanting to eliminate the problems of two cups and of sequence would have excised the earlier cup, not the latter. Even worse, this explanation cannot at all account for the omission of v. 19b, where the cup is not yet mentioned.

Virtually the only explanation that might account for the shorter text if the longer is original is that vv. 19b-20 dropped out by accident. But this is problematic as well. Only rarely do such long passages (thirty-two words) drop out of a text for no apparent reason. And it scarcely seems accidental (1) that these thirty-words just happen to supply precisely what is missing in the account otherwise, a notion that Jesus' body and blood would be given on behalf of his disciples, (2) that this theological construal is otherwise alien to Luke's entire two-volume work, and (3) that these words, and only these words, parallel the words found in 1 Corinthians. In short, it is difficult to explain the shorter text if the longer text is original.

But it is not at all difficult to account for an interpolation of the disputed words into Luke's brief account of Jesus' last supper with his disciples. For while Luke's account of Jesus going to his death proved useful for proto-orthodox Christians of the second century who themselves emphasized the necessity of martyrdom and the need to emulate the tranquility of Jesus in the face of it, it was not at all useful when they wanted to stress, in direct opposition to certain groups of docetic opponents, that Christ experienced a real passion in which his body was broken and his blood was shed for the sins of the world.

We know of a number of Christians who embraced docetic Christologies from at least the beginning of the second century onwards (i.e. from precisely the period in which this Lukan text must have been altered). Representatives of such views are known from the writings of Ignatius and other second- and third-century heresiologists; some of them are known by name, with the arch-heretics Marcion, Saturninus, and Basilides heading the list. Despite the differences among their views, these Christians were unified in thinking that Christ did not have a real flesh and blood existence. He was a phantasm, a specter. By implication, at least in the eyes of their proto-orthodox opponents, these docetists necessarily devalued the salvific significance of Christ's death, indeed necessarily denied that Christ "really" died and shed "real" blood, let alone that he shed blood "for you."

For the proto-orthodox, on the other hand, it was precisely the sacrifice of Christ's flesh and the shedding of his blood that brought redemption to the fallen race of humans. For them, Jesus was a human not in appearance only but in reality; he had real flesh and real blood, he suffered real pain and died a real death. And most importantly for the textual history of this passage, Jesus' suffering and death were not incidental to salvation but were integral to it. Jesus' body was given for believers, and it was his blood that established the new covenant.

It is no accident that Tertullian refers on one occasion to Christ's consecration of the wine as his blood to disparage Marcion's view that he was merely a phantom (Treatise on the Soul, 17), while on another occasion he cites the entire institution narrative as known from 1 Cor. 11 and the longer text of Luke to the same end, precisely to show that Christ's giving of his body and blood for his disciples demonstrated the reality of that body and blood (Adv. Marc., 40).

In using the text in this way, Tertullian is closely allied with other proto-orthodox authors of the second century such as Irenaeus, who also used this passage in his attacks on both Marcion and other unnamed docetists.

It is precisely the emphasis on Jesus' giving of his own flesh and blood for the salvation of believers, as represented in the physical elements of the bread broken "for you" and the cup given "for you," that made the longer text of Luke 22:19-20 so attractive to the proto-orthodox heresiologists of the second century. And it is the same theological concern that may account for the genesis of the text, which as we have seen, evidently did not come from the hand of Luke himself.

Consider now the areas of research that both impinge upon this textual decision and are affected by it. It is obviously a significant matter of exegesis to know which words belong in Luke's text. As I've pointed out, it's impossible for interpreters to explain what Luke's words mean if they don't know what these words were. Establishing the earliest form of the text also matters for our understanding of New Testament theology, since here is a book that construes the significance of Jesus' death in a non-Pauline way, not as an atonement but as a ground for repentance that leads to forgiveness. This construal in turn is significant for our understanding of the diversity of early Christianity, as the traditional Christian creeds developed from one of these paths of thought rather than the other. It may well be that liturgical diversity in early Christianity is at issue as well, since the older form of Luke's text appears to reflect not only a different wording of the institution narrative at the Lord's supper, but a different sequence within the liturgical act itself, in which the cup is given primacy over the bread. These forms of diversity came to fuller expression in the second century, as historians of liturgy and doctrine know from our early sources; interestingly, it may have been the historical development of Christian doctrine that led to the modification of the text in the first place, as second century Christians searched for texts to combat proponents of docetic Christologies. This in turn shows that the transmission of the text was affected by social disputes in early Christianity, in this case, by the struggles to establish emerging orthodoxy. I might add that other kinds of disputes and social issues played their role on the transmission of the text, though in passages other than this one, issues such as the rise of Christian anti-Judaism, the oppression of women, the apologetic movement, and the rise of asceticism.

At least this one passage is sufficient, though, to make my basic point. There are dozens of passages that need to be worked on in this way with these sets of questions, not just to determine some kind of reputedly "original" text, but also to see how the transmission of this text came to be so thoroughly enmeshed in the concerns and conflicts of the emerging Christian church. Thus the modernist obsession with origins, historically so characteristic of biblical studies, can give way even in the study of the text, a study invested not simply in a hypothetically primal fixed entity ("the autograph") but in texts that have been construed over time, reread by readers in real contexts, and occasionally rewritten by some of these readers in the process of transmission.

Let me conclude by saying that in recent years the firstborn of New Testament studies has begun to show some internal signs of growth, as specialists in the field have begun to recognize the potential of the data at their disposal for scholars who do not reside among the rare and occasionally endangered species of the professional textual critic. It's absolutely true that this aspect of NT studies has typically conjured up images of uninteresting, technical, and theoretically naive modernistic discourse, undertaken by uninteresting and theoretically naive modernist technicians who have nothing to say of broader interest to scholars working in the field of NT, let alone to the larger academy of religion. But we are now well positioned to move beyond this banal perception, which indeed we can do, if train a new generation of scholars in the field to pursue new lines of inquiry and so bring this neglected child to an age of maturity.

http://rosetta.reltech.org/TC/extras/ehrman-pres.html

[Vangelovski]

Firstly, I BELIEVE in EVOLUTION! Evolution is part of MAINSTREAM education curriculum in nearly all (if not all) countries of the world today and probably has been that way for most of last century and a creationist calling it "absurd" is, IMHO, an unsustainable ideological position (i.e. it is a fringe position in the advanced/developed and developing world countries today).

There are scientist who believe God created the Universe but they support evolution! This, IMHO, is a far more reasoned and logical position to take on the question of the existence of God than to argue for a newly created earth in accordance of the creation theory found in the Bible.


Lavce, mate, an atheist can NOT believe in the existence of God!

Indigen, just because something is in the mainstream education cirriculum does not make it true or accurate. There are many inaccuracies in the education systems, including the other mainstream favourite that ancient Macedonians were Greek. That is not a reason to believe something. There are many scientists, Christian and atheists that do not support evolution. Evolution is just a theory and an unprovable one at that.

It does not appear that you have read any of the evidence that I have posted, particularly in relation to the inaccuracies of radiocarbon dating. Scientists cannot even accurately date human remains beyond a few thousand years. When they say a certain human bone is this many millions of years old, that is just a massive guesstimate based on unprovable assumptions.

You're accusing Christians on basing their beliefs on "unsustainable ideological positions", but you've neither made an attempt to refute the evidence provided nor provide any of your own. Rather, you've just posted rhetoric.

[makedonin]

Here is another read from christian biblical scholar, a guide for undarstanding the bible posted on another thread

http://www.macedoniantruth.org/forum/showthread.php?t=4181

[Vangelovski]

Good old Bart. Some views on his works:

Conservative biblical scholarship has been critical of Ehrman's thesis and unconventional methodology of textual criticism. Daniel B. Wallace, a New Testament scholar at Dallas Theological Seminary and Executive Director of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, wrote, "Unfortunately, as careful a scholar as Ehrman is, his treatment of major theological changes in the text of the New Testament tends to fall under one of two criticisms: Either his textual decisions are wrong, or his interpretation is wrong." Wallace also wrote, "One almost gets the impression that he is encouraging the Chicken Littles in the Christian community to panic at data that they are simply not prepared to wrestle with."

On his internet blog, Ben Witherington III, a New Testament scholar at Asbury Theological Seminary in Kentucky, criticized the book's research writing "It is not sufficient to reply that Bart is writing for a popular audience and thus we would not expect much scholarly discussion even in the footnotes. Even in a work of this sort, we would expect some good up to date bibliography for those disposed to do further study, not merely copious cross-references to one’s other popular level books."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bart_D._Ehrman

Bart's debate with William Lane Craig. Bart gets a little confused about the facts of the matter:

http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/p96.htm

[indigen]

Indigen, just because something is in the mainstream education cirriculum does not make it true or accurate.

That may be one way to look at it if you are opposed to the mainstream view but I am aligned with it.

There are many inaccuracies in the education systems, including the other mainstream favourite that ancient Macedonians were Greek.

This is political and not scientific based and is not necessarily universal. When I went to school, a few decades back, we studied that Macedonians were "Barbarians" and I remember talking to an Australian (SMH) journalist in 1992, who was covering some of the events relating to Macedonian recognition of the time in Sydney, and she said the same!

That is not a reason to believe something.

It has been MAINSTREAM and it made sense to me when I was at school (many moons ago) and thus I don't intend to expend much energy on it. If it becomes an issue whereby the creationists get some momentum and push for their world-view to be the mainstream, then I will seriously consider taking a stand against it. As it is, creationists will need to convince the world mainstream scientists, academia and political and social stakeholders first.

There are many scientists, Christian and atheists that do not support evolution. Evolution is just a theory and an unprovable one at that.

Obviously those many are FEW IN COMPARISON to those that do! And I would seriously like to know what these atheists support if not evolution! What else could they support?

It does not appear that you have read any of the evidence that I have posted, particularly in relation to the inaccuracies of radiocarbon dating.

See above! It is not me that you will need to convince first but the MAINSTREAM SCIENTISTS, academia, and etc.

Scientists cannot even accurately date human remains beyond a few thousand years.

Is carbon dating the only reference point for assessing the age of the earth? What about tectonic plate movement and the speed at which plates move? Can't we see that many millions of years ago the Earth's land mass was one (all the continents fit together like a jigsaw puzzle) and that by working out a rate of plate movement we can come to an accurate (or even approximate) age when they were together?

When they say a certain human bone is this many millions of years old, that is just a massive guesstimate based on unprovable assumptions.

I will leave that for the scientific community to answer (see above).

You're accusing Christians on basing their beliefs on "unsustainable ideological positions",

You should not speak for all Christians because obviously they are the majority in many of the countries where evolution is taught and have fully endorsed that!

but you've neither made an attempt to refute the evidence provided nor provide any of your own.

I posted some FACTS about what is mainstream today and what is fringe and you can not refute that.

Rather, you've just posted rhetoric.

I would like to see an MTO poll to ascertain the level of support from forum members for either the mainstream evolution science curriculum or the biblical creationist minority movement.

So pocit,
I.

[Vangelovski]

Indigen,

Its probably best that you don't comment on matters that you are unwilling or unable to discuss in any substance. Sticking to what you learn't at school many moons ago and discounting all scientific discoveries since is not exactly a well thought-out position.

Further, it would be wise to at least do some basic reading on that which you are defending, lest anyone ask you some questions. I don't want to embarrass you right now, but I may come back with a few on evolution later, so maybe a wikipedia article or two at the very least?

I must have missed those irrefutable facts that you posted. Perhaps you would like to post them again?

Finally, there are many atheist scientists that do not support evolution simply because it is so fantastical and unprovable.

[Vangelovski]

The universe obeys certain rules—laws to which all things must adhere. These laws are precise, and many of them are mathematical in nature. Natural laws are hierarchical in nature; secondary laws of nature are based on primary laws of nature, which have to be just right in order for our universe to be possible. But, where did these laws come from, and why do they exist? If the universe were merely the accidental by-product of a big bang, then why should it obey orderly principles—or any principles at all for that matter? Such laws are consistent with biblical creation. Natural laws exist because the universe has a Creator God who is logical and has imposed order on His universe (Genesis 1:1).

The Word of God
Everything in the universe, every plant and animal, every rock, every particle of matter or light wave, is bound by laws which it has no choice but to obey. The Bible tells us that there are laws of nature—“ordinances of heaven and earth” (Jeremiah 33:25). These laws describe the way God normally accomplishes His will in the universe.

God’s logic is built into the universe, and so the universe is not haphazard or arbitrary. It obeys laws of chemistry that are logically derived from the laws of physics, many of which can be logically derived from other laws of physics and laws of mathematics. The most fundamental laws of nature exist only because God wills them to; they are the logical, orderly way that the Lord upholds and sustains the universe He has created. The atheist is unable to account for the logical, orderly state of the universe. Why should the universe obey laws if there is no law-giver? But laws of nature are perfectly consistent with biblical creation. In fact, the Bible is the foundation for natural laws.

The Law of Life (Biogenesis)
There is one well-known law of life: the law of biogenesis. This law states simply that life always comes from life. This is what observational science tells us: organisms reproduce other organisms after their own kind. Historically, Louis Pasteur disproved one alleged case of spontaneous generation; he showed that life comes from previous life. Since then, we have seen that this law is universal—with no known exceptions. This is, of course, exactly what we would expect from the Bible. According to Genesis 1, God supernaturally created the first diverse kinds of life on earth and made them to reproduce after their kind. Notice that molecules-to-man evolution violates the law of biogenesis. Evolutionists believe that life (at least once) spontaneously formed from nonliving chemicals. But this is inconsistent with the law of biogenesis. Real science confirms the Bible.

The Laws of Chemistry
Life requires a specific chemistry. Our bodies are powered by chemical reactions and depend on the laws of chemistry operating in a uniform fashion. Even the information that makes up any living being is stored on a long molecule called DNA. Life as we know it would not be possible if the laws of chemistry were different. God created the laws of chemistry in just the right way so that life would be possible.

The laws of chemistry give different properties to the various elements (each made of one type of atom) and compounds (made up of two or more types of atoms that are bonded together) in the universe. For example, when given sufficient activation energy, the lightest element (hydrogen) will react with oxygen to form water. Water itself has some interesting properties, such as the ability to hold an unusually large amount of heat energy. When frozen, water forms crystals with six-sided symmetry (which is why snowflakes are generally six-sided). Contrast this with salt (sodium chloride) crystals, which tend to form cubes. It is the six-fold symmetry of water ice that causes “holes” in its crystal, making it less dense than its own liquid. That’s why ice floats in water (whereas essentially all other frozen compounds sink in their own liquid).

The properties of elements and compounds are not arbitrary. In fact, the elements can be logically organized into a periodic table based on their physical properties. Substances in the same column on the table tend to have similar properties. This follows because elements in a vertical column have the same outer electron structures. These outermost electrons determine the physical characteristics of the atom. The periodic table did not happen by chance. Atoms and molecules have their various properties because their electrons are bound by the laws of quantum physics. In other words, chemistry is based on physics. If the laws of quantum physics were just a bit different, atoms might not even be possible. God designed the laws of physics just right so that the laws of chemistry would come out the way He wanted them to.

The Laws of Planetary Motion
The creation scientist Johannes Kepler discovered that the planets in our solar system obey three laws of nature. He found that planets orbit in ellipses (not perfect circles as had been previously thought) with the sun at one focus of the ellipse; thus a given planet is sometimes closer to the sun than at other times. Kepler also found that planets sweep out equal areas in equal times—in other words, planets speed up as they get closer to the sun within their orbit. And third, Kepler found the exact mathematical relationship between a planet’s distance from the sun (a) and its orbital period (p); planets that are farther from the sun take much longer to orbit than planets that are closer (expressed as p2=a3). Kepler’s laws also apply to the orbits of moons around a given planet.1

As with the laws of chemistry, these laws of planetary motion are not fundamental. Rather, they are the logical derivation of other laws of nature. In fact, it was another creation scientist (Sir Isaac Newton) who discovered that Kepler’s laws could be derived mathematically from certain laws of physics—specifically, the laws of gravity and motion (which Newton himself formulated).

The Laws of Physics
The field of physics describes the behavior of the universe at its most fundamental level. There are many different laws of physics. They describe the way the universe operates today. Some laws of physics describe how light propagates, how energy is transported, how gravity operates, how mass moves through space, and many other phenomena. The laws of physics are usually mathematical in nature; some laws of physics can be described with a concise formula, such as E=mc2. The simple formula F=ma shows how an object with mass (m) will accelerate (a) when a net force (F) is applied to it. It is amazing that every object in the universe consistently obeys these rules.

There is a hierarchy in physics: some laws of physics can be derived from other laws of physics. For example, Einstein’s famous formula E=mc2 can be derived from the principles and equations of special relativity. Conversely, there are many laws of physics that cannot be derived from other laws of physics; many of these are suspected to be derivative principles, but scientists have not yet deduced their derivation.

And some laws of physics may be truly fundamental (not based on other laws); they exist only because God wills them to. In fact, this must be the case for at least one law of physics (and perhaps several)—the most fundamental. (Logically, this is because if the most fundamental law were based on some other law, it would not be the most fundamental law.)

The Laws of Mathematics
Notice that the laws of physics are highly mathematical in nature. They would not work if there were not also laws of mathematics. Mathematical laws and principles include the rules of addition, the transitive property, the commutative properties of addition and multiplication, the binomial theorem, and many others. Like the laws of physics, some laws and properties of mathematics can be derived from other mathematical principles. But unlike the laws of physics, the laws of mathematics are abstract; they are not “attached” to any specific part of the universe. It is possible to imagine a universe where the laws of physics are different, but it is difficult to imagine a (consistent) universe where the laws of mathematics are different.2

The laws of mathematics are an example of a “transcendent truth.” They must be true regardless of what kind of universe God created. This may be because God’s nature is logical and mathematical; thus, any universe He chose to create would necessarily be mathematical in nature. The secular naturalist cannot account for the laws of mathematics. Certainly he would believe in mathematics and would use mathematics, but he is unable to account for the existence of mathematics within a naturalistic framework since mathematics is not a part of the physical universe. However, the Christian understands that there is a God beyond the universe and that mathematics reflects the thoughts of the Lord. Understanding math is, in a sense, “thinking God’s thoughts after Him”3 (though in a limited, finite way, of course).

Some have supposed that mathematics is a human invention. It is said that if human history had been different, an entirely different form of math would have been constructed—one with alternate laws, theorems, axioms, etc. But such thinking is not consistent. Are we to believe that the universe did not obey mathematical laws before people discovered them? Did the planets orbit differently before Kepler discovered that p2=a3? Clearly, mathematical laws are something that human beings have discovered, not invented. The only thing that might have been different (had human history taken a different course) is the notation—the way in which we choose to express mathematical truths through symbols. But these truths exist regardless of how they are expressed. Mathematics could rightly be called the “language of creation.”

The Laws of Logic
All the laws of nature, from physics and chemistry to the law of biogenesis, depend on the laws of logic. Like mathematics, the laws of logic are transcendent truths. We cannot imagine that the laws of logic could be anything different from what they are. Take the law of noncontradiction for example. This law states that you cannot have both “A” and “not A” at the same time and in the same relationship. Without the laws of logic, reasoning would be impossible. But where do the laws of logic come from?

The atheist cannot account for the laws of logic, even though he or she must accept that they exist in order to do any rational thinking. But according to the Bible, God is logical. Indeed, the law of noncontradiction reflects God’s nature; God cannot lie (Numbers 23:19) or be tempted with evil (James 1:13) since these things contradict His perfect nature. Since we have been made in God’s image, we instinctively know the laws of logic. We are able to reason logically (though because of finite minds and sin we don’t always think entirely logically).

The Uniformity of Nature
The laws of nature are uniform. They do not (arbitrarily) change, and they apply throughout the whole cosmos. The laws of nature apply in the future just as they have applied in the past; this is one of the most basic assumptions in all of science. Without this assumption, science would be impossible. If the laws of nature suddenly and arbitrarily changed tomorrow, then past experimental results would tell us nothing about the future. Why is it that we can depend on the laws of nature to apply consistently throughout time? The secular scientists cannot justify this important assumption. But the Christian can because the Bible gives us the answer. God is Lord over all creation and sustains the universe in a consistent and logical way. God does not change, and so He upholds the universe in a consistent, uniform way throughout time (Jeremiah 33:25).

Conclusion
We have seen that the laws of nature depend on other laws of nature, which ultimately depend on God’s will. Thus, God created the laws of physics in just the right way so that the laws of chemistry would be correct, so that life can exist. It is doubtful that any human would have been able to solve such a complex puzzle. Yet, the Lord has done so. The atheist cannot account for these laws of nature (even though he agrees that they must exist), for such laws are inconsistent with naturalism. Yet, they are perfectly consistent with the Bible. We expect the universe to be organized in a logical, orderly fashion and to obey uniform laws because the universe was created by the power of God.

Dr. Jason Lisle holds a Ph.D. in astrophysics from the University of Colorado at Boulder.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v1/n2/god-natural-law

[Vangelovski]

The Origin of Life

By Walter Bradley

Introduction

Antony Flew, a British philosophy professor and leading champion of atheism for more than half a century, changed his mind and became a deist at the age of 81. In a telephone interview with ABC News (12/9/2004), Flew indicated that a "super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature." Nicholas Wade in the New York Times (6/13/2000) summarized the current state of the affairs regarding the origin of life as follows: "The chemistry of the first life is a nightmare to explain. No one has yet developed a plausible explanation to show how the earliest chemicals of life—thought to be RNA—might have constructed themselves from the inorganic chemicals likely to have been around on early earth. The spontaneous assembly of a small RNA molecule on the primitive earth 'would have been a near miracle' two experts on the subject helpfully declared last year." What is it about the origin of life that has so confounded scientists and persuaded atheists to become deists or theist? Why is the origin of life considered one of the "great, unsolved mysteries of science" (Discover 1993)?

The minimal functional requirements for a living system include processing energy, storing information, and replicating. Lila Gatlin captures the essence of the problem by noting that life may be defined operationally as an informational processing system that has the ability to store and process information that is essential for its own reproduction. These biological operations are made possible by very complex molecules such as DNA, RNA, and protein. In this essay, I would like explore the "miracle of the origin of life" by providing on overview of the molecular complexity that is essential to life and by indicating why it is so difficult for unguided natural laws, sometimes characterized as chance and necessity, to ever adequately account for the origin of these remarkable molecules of life.

Information and the Molecules of Life

Protein, RNA, and DNA are all long polymer chains. The "mer" in "polymer" means building block and "poly" means many. The protein molecule is a polymer typically composed of 100 to 300 smaller molecular building blocks (or mers) called amino acids. There are 20 distinct types of amino acid building blocks in protein, with five shown schematically in Figure 1. These amino acids chemically react to form long polymer chains, which subsequently folds up into a three dimensional structures, as seen in Figure 2. It is this distinctive structure that allows various proteins to serve as catalysts, making chemical reactions in living systems go a million times more rapidly.



Figure 1. Five schematics of various amino acids



Figure 2. A polymer chain folded into a 3-D protein structure

The sequencing of the twenty different kinds of amino acids is what determines the three dimensional structure. Only a very, very small fraction of the possible sequences of amino acids give three dimensional structures that have any biological utility. In fact it has been predicted theoretically and confirmed experimentally that the probability of getting the correct sequence of amino acids for a protein such as cytochrome C is approximately 1 in 1060. How then are proteins ever successfully assembled from amino acids in living cells?

The DNA and RNA molecules are the key to getting the remarkable sequences of amino acids in proteins that provide critical biological functions in living cells. The DNA is encoded with information that can be used to sequence the amino acids in various proteins for a given organism. The m-RNA molecule receives this encoded information from the DNA and then serves as a template to get exactly the right sequencing of amino acids to give over 300 distinct functional proteins. We may think of the DNA as the "computer brain" for each cell, controlling the sequencing of amino acids in 300 or more distinctive proteins, which in turn control the necessary chemistry of life in the cell. To make a DNA molecule with the right encoded information for E-coli bacteria would require 4,600,000 instructions for the chemist, or the equivalent of 800 pages of information. So while this solves the problem of the origin of the necessary information to sequence (or encode) various proteins, it does not solve the mystery of the origin of this huge amount of information, but merely transfers it back to the DNA (or possibly RNA in the first living system). The origin of the large amount of information in DNA that is expressed in the amazing molecular complexity essential for life is the central enigma of the origin of life.

Making DNA, RNA and Protein under Prebiotic Conditions

DNA molecules reproduce themselves (with the help of proteins) and, assisted by RNA, encode the various amino acid sequences in proteins that make possible the efficient uses of energy in living systems. Thus, DNA, RNA and protein provide the necessary functions of life: namely, information storage, replication, and efficient utilization of energy. But how were the first DNA, RNA and protein produced? Origin of life research for more than 50 years has tried to answer this question? What have we learned?

Origin of life research began in the 1950s with the attempt to chemically synthesize the basic molecular building blocks for protein and DNA, including various amino acids, bases, and sugars. The early success of Miller and Urey in making these molecular building blocks, ostensibly under early earth conditions, was seriously undercut in the 1980s when it was determined that the early earth's atmosphere was never rich in methane, ammonia. or hydrogen, the chemical gases used in their experiments. One cannot produce more than minuscule yields of amino acids and ribose sugar when one uses a plausible prebiotic chemistry. Today the origin of these essential building blocks of life remains a mystery.

A second problem is that the building blocks on the prebiotic earth would have been surrounded by many other chemical reagents that react with the building blocks much more quickly than they react with each other. Unless such destructive cross reactions could somehow be avoided, the emergence of DNA, RNA or protein would be impossible.

A third problem is the assembly of the building blocks into the polymer chains. For example, amino acids can be joined (in chemical reactions) in a variety of ways, but only one type of joining of adjacent amino acid molecules (i.e., chemical bonds called peptide) give a polymer chain that has the function of a protein, as seen in Figure 3. In a similar way, 3-5 phosphodiester linkages are needed but 2-5 linkages dominate in the polymerization of polynucleotides, which is a primary step in the formation of DNA and RNA.



Figure 3. Peptide bonds forming to join amino acids in a polymer chain

A fourth challenge results from the fact that amino acids and sugars come in right-handed or left-handed versions (structures that are identical except that they are mirror images, as seen in Figure 4). All amino acids chemically react equally with each version equally rapidly, but living systems have only L-amino acids and D-sugars. How could we possibly get 100 or more amino acids that are all Ls from a mixture of equal concentrations of Ls and Ds? This problem has been studied extensively but the explanation remains elusive.



Figure 4. Left-handed and right-handed amino acids - mirror images

Beyond the problems of producing the building blocks under plausible prebiotic conditions, avoiding fatal cross chemical reactions and getting the building blocks assembled, getting on L amino acids or D sugars, the most challenging problem in the origin of life scenario is how to get the correct sequencing of amino acids in proteins and the correct sequencing of bases in DNA to give information that can provide biological function. As previously noted, the information encoded on the DNA of E-coli bacteria is the equivalent of 800 pages of information. While it is sometime argued that this can happen with some kind of chemical selection over time, no selection is possible on molecular systems that do not yet have the capacity to replicate with occasional mistakes and provide functions that give selective advantage. Functional DNA, RNA or protein might be able to incrementally improve with replication mistakes acted upon by selection, but this is meaningless in molecules that are not yet sufficiently complex as to provide at least minimal function. It is the molecular version of the old problem of which came first, the chicken or the egg.

Summary

Michael Behe has argued that there are irreducibly complex hurdles that an evolutionary process driven by natural selection cannot overcome —for example, the concurrent development of a multiple component system that provides no selective advantage until each of the components has developed to a rather advanced level and can function together as a system. The origin of life would seem to be the quiescent example of an irreducibly complex hurdle in the meta-narrative of the origin and development of living systems. The necessary information, which expresses itself as molecular complexity, simply cannot be developed by chance and necessity but requires an intelligent cause, an intelligent designer, a Creator God.